10 35 

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 


BULLETIN, 1923. No. I 


DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT 
of 

YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES 

By 

HELEN THOMPSON WOOLLEY 

and 

ELIZABETH FERRIS 

Prepared under the auspices of the Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, Cincinnati 
constituting No. 8 in the Foundation's Series of Social Studies 



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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 


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l'rTS3> 


BULLETIN, 1923, No. 1 


DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT 
of 

YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES 


By 

HELEN THOMPSON WOOLLEY 

and 

ELIZABETH FERRIS 


Prepared under the auspices of the Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, Cincinnati 
constituting No. 8 in the Foundation’s Series of Social Studies 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1923 


2 . 















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OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM 
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PURCHASER AGREES NOT TO RESELL OR DISTRIBUTE THIS 
COPY FOR PROFIT.—PUB. RES. 57, APPROVED MAY 11, 1022 


LIBRARY OF CONQRfeSS 
received 

JUN 22 1923 


DOCUMENTS DIVISION 







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CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Preface- v 

Introduction - 1 

Conditions of the experiment- 4 

Scientific methods and standards- 6 

Analysis of the group- 8 

Methods of teaching- 10 

Case reports: 

Children suffering primarily from neglect- 19 

Defective children- 02 

Sufferers from special defects- 81 

A psychopathic child- 96 

Discussion of results- 10- 

Index - on 

hi 































I 








PREFACE. 


It is difficult for those actively engaged in educational and social 
work to find time to cast the results of their projects in a form which 
makes them available to others. To follow up and reexamine indi¬ 
vidual cases of special interest over a time sufficient to permit one 
to speak with some confidence regarding the outcome, and to collect 
and formulate all of the findings for publication, mean a consecutive 
effort and an expenditure of time which are seldom possible for the 
busy executive. The Helen S. Trounstine Foundation of Cincinnati 
has, as one of its chief purposes, the furnishing of additional aid 
which will make it possible to gather up and interpret to the public 
the work of educational and social agencies which have no resources 
to do it themselves. The foundation sometimes furnishes the time 
of a worker of its own, and sometimes frees the time of the executive 
in charge to complete the preparation of studies for publication. 
In the present instance, the foundation made it possible for me to 
take enough time from other duties to work with Miss Ferris in 
preparing, for publication this study of first-grade failures. This 
was especially appropriate because the most absorbing interest of 
Miss Trounstine, as a memorial to whom the foundation was estab¬ 
lished, lay in the solution of the many problems affecting child life 
and in the promotion of constructive activities for child welfare. 

The piece of work reported in this bulletin required the interest, 
support, and cooperation of a large number of people. It was the 
outgrowth of the work of the psychological laboratory of the voca¬ 
tion bureau of the public schools of Cincinnati. The laboratory 
exists as the result of the combined efforts of the Council of Social 
Agencies of Cincinnati, of which C. M. Bookman is the director, and 
the public schools, of which Randall J. Condon is the superintendent. 
The laboratory was founded, in the first place, by a private fund 
raised for this purpose through efforts of M. Edith Campbell, of the 
Schmidlapp Bureau of Cincinnati, and E. N. Clopper, of the National 
Child Labor Committee. Later the fund was taken over in the cen¬ 
tralized budget campaign of the Council of Social Agencies. A 
substantial portion of the expense of the laboratory is still borne by 
the Council of Social Agencies, though the board of education has 
assumed a share of it. Without the cordial support of both Mr. 
Bookman and Mr. Condon the work could not have been undertaken. 



VI 


PREFACE. 


The assistant superintendents, Edward D. Roberts and Anna E. 
Logan, have given the project the continued benefit of their interest 
and support. Prof. Frances Jenkins, of the department of education 
of the University of Cincinnati, who has in charge the supervision of 
instruction in the special classes of the schoof system, has kept con¬ 
stantly in touch with class and teacher and been continually helpful 
in her criticism and suggestion. Mr. E. C. Trisler, principal of the 
school in which this first class was conducted, was one of the first 
to see the need for a class of this type, and from the start urged 
its establishment in his school. His interest and cordial cooperation 
have been unfailing. Mrs. Alice A. Foster, our home visitor, has 
kept as closely and as helpfully in touch with the homes as the press 
of work would allow. Finally, the laboratory assistants who exam¬ 
ined the children, and the social workers of the city who gave us the 
benefit of their experiences with some of the families should each be 
mentioned by name if space permitted. 

In the writing of the book I have been responsible for the final 
form of all of it except the section on “Methods of. teaching,” 
which was written by Miss Ferris. In making the case studies, 
Miss Ferris furnished a written statement of the progress of each 
child in the class and of her judgment of him, which was largely 
drawn upon in writing up the case. The final prognosis about each 
child was written separately by Miss Ferris and me and the results 
compared. The extent' to which the two judgments coincided was 
so great as to be a surprise to both authors. No important differences 
of opinion with regard to probable future development were found. 

In preparing the bulletin, we have hoped to interest both teachers 
and social workers. Although the number of cases presented is 
small—only 16 —the background of experience from which they are 
judged is very large. This group has merely the advantage of the 
longest period of observation. While the larger group furnishes 
endless variety of detail, we found in it no cases which could not be 
classed in one or another of the subdivisions of our little group of 
16 . The 16 cases seemed to us so typical of much larger numbers and 
so valuable as illustrations of the kind of knowledge needed to un¬ 
derstand children’s difficulties, and the kind of resources essential 
in finding solutions, that we have set them forth without apology for 
the small number. If we have helped in defining some of the types 
of cooperation between the school and the community, which must 
be further developed if educational problems are to be solved, our 
purpose is accomplished. 

Helen T. Woolley. 

Cincinnati, Ohio, September 1 , 1921. 


DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL 
FAILURES. 


INTRODUCTION. 

This bulletin is a report of one of those side issues, or by-products, 
of a piece of scientific work which often proves to be more im¬ 
portant than the main issue. When, in 1916, the psychological lab¬ 
oratory of the Vocation Bureau of Cincinnati was given an official 
position in the public-school system, the first task assigned it was 
that of diagnosing defective children and transferring them to 
classes for defectives. The laboratory was quite aware that it would 
be performing its most important service in this respect by selecting 
the children for the special classes as young as they could be? 
definitely diagnosed, and while there was still time to train them. 
Although at that time no statistical study of the matter had been 
made, we knew that the diagnosis of most defective children was 
postponed too late both for the good of the child and for the good 
of the school. It is when several successive years of failure have 
made the children noticeably overage for their grades, and many 
of them begin to be troublesome in behavior, that they become press¬ 
ing as school problems and are apt to be recommended for special 
classes. A study has since been made * 1 of all of the children who 
had, up to 1918, left school after being enrolled in our classes for 
defectives. It showed that over 80 per cent of them were 12 years 
or more of age when they were first assigned to special classes. 
The average length of stay in the special class was only a year and 
a half, quite too short a time to give the special school an oppor¬ 
tunity for training. Meanwhile, repeated failures and unnecessary 
conflicts with authority had made the children much harder to train 
than they would otherwise have been. Kealizing this state of 
affairs, even before the statistical proof of it was available, the 
laboratory began its policy of urging teachers to recommend for 
examination children in the first and second grades whose academic 
failure was bad enough to lend any color to the suspicion of mental 
defect. 

In the early part of the year 1917 many of these first and second 
grade failures were examined. Among them were found some whose 

1 Feeble-minded ex-school children, by Helen T. Woolley and Hornell Hart. Studies 
from the Helen S. Trounstine Foundation. Cincinnati, 1621. Vol. I, No. 7, pp. 237-264. 

1 




2 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


school failure was almost complete, but whose mental tests were 
above the limits usually set for mental defect. These children con¬ 
stituted for the laboratory a group of unusual interest. Here, apr 
parently, were the avoidable failures, or the merely backward chil¬ 
dren who might be started early upon a suitable type of training. 
The school system of Cincinnati had already provided a special school 
called an “ opportunity school ” for children from the third through 
the sixth grade who were as much as two years retarded. For 
several years no other conditions for acceptance to opportunity 
classes were set down. A mental examination of the children in the 
school showed that under this plan many feeble-minded children 
were assigned to opportunity classes. Accordingly, the requirement 
was made that only children who were recommended by the psycho¬ 
logical laboratory could be assigned to opportunity classes. Most 
of those assigned under this ruling were children who were below 
average in ability, but were above the limits of defect. A few 
children were discovered who were average or even somewhat 
superior, and who were nevertheless retarded in school. These were 
also assigned to opportunity classes with the idea that they might 
make up what they had lost, and be returned to the grades appro¬ 
priate to their ages. The children in the first and second grades 
whom our survey revealed were of the same type as the opportunity- 
class children, but were being discovered younger when the hope of 
retrieving their failures was greater. 

The psychological laboratory was quite aware that the younger the 
child the more difficult to make a final and positive diagnosis of his 
status. The children in this group, while they were alike in being- 
school failures whose present mental status seemed above the limits 
of defect, "were nevertheless widely varied in disposition, in home 
conditions, and in plwsical condition. The only definite conclusion 
to be drawn was that here were children whose school failure was 
apparently due to causes other than mere mental inability to do 
school work. Just what the cause might be in each case and whether 
or not the failure could be retrieved were matters for further study. 
To meet the situation, the laboratory recommended the establishment 
of classes for further study and observation of these children. The 
purpose of the classes was first of all to complete the diagnosis and 
come to a decision as to the cause of the failure. If the failure 
proved to be of the type which could be retrieved, the next step was 
to retrieve it and return the child to a regular grade, ready to play 
his part. If the failure were due to causes which could not be 
removed, the task was to determine the type of defect present and 
assign the child to the class in the school system best adapted to 
his needs. Provided no suitable class were in existence, the final 


INTRODUCTION. 3 

task was to urge upon the school system the establishment of ad¬ 
ditional types of classes which would meet the situation. 

From among the children examined in the early part of 1917, the 
laboratory selected a group of about 15 and recommended to the 
superintendent of schools that they be organized into a diagnostic 
class of the type outlined, to be called an “ observation class.” The 
superintendent approved the suggestion and the class was organized 
in September, 1917. The term “year” throughout the report refers 
to the school A^ear, from September to June. 

The selection of a teacher for a class of this type is a matter crucial 
to the success of the experiment. The desirable qualifications are 
experience with both normal and defective children, resourcefulness 
of method, a sympathetic spirit, endless patience, and a knowledge 
of social problems as well as of educational ones. With the assist¬ 
ance of the superintendent of schools and the university supervisor 
of special classes, Elizabeth Ferris was chosen to conduct the first 
class. 

The contents of this bulletin will be a somewhat detailed report of 
the first observation class of 16 children, and the history of each child 
down to the summer of 1921, together with the general conclusions 
which can be drawn from our four years of effort and continued ob¬ 
servation. Small as the number of cases is, we believe that within 
this little group are found all of the types of problem children which 
the primary-school teacher is apt to encounter. If by telling as com¬ 
pletely and vividly as we can the early school histories of these poor 
little neglected, thwarted, anxious, injured children, with their lim¬ 
ited endowment, their physical defects, their home difficulties, and 
their warped personalities, we can help some teacher or social worker 
to understand the little failures she is trying to help, the result will 
amply justify all our efforts. 


CONDITIONS OF THE EXPERIMENT. 

In presenting this account of our experiment with an observation 
class we are under no illusion as to its imperfections. It seems 
worth presenting, not because it constitutes in any respect a model, or 
pictures conditions which can be considered ideal, but because it 
tells a real experience of what can be done for certain types of young 
school failures by employing only the very imperfect resources at the 
command of most city school systems. The imperfections are only 
too apparent. To carry out ideally such a piece of work as that re¬ 
ported here one should have had facilities for complete medical ex¬ 
amination of every child, including the standard laboratory tests of 
blood and urine and X ray; means of carrying out the resulting 
recommendations for removal of tonsils and adenoids, special feed¬ 
ing, treatment of teeth, antisyphilitic treatment, or whatever the rec¬ 
ommendation might be; the opportunity for good social investigation 
and case work treatment of each family; and the chance to make 
the schoolroom environment ideal and the schoolroom equipment 
adequate. 

Our actual resources in every instance fell far short of the ideal. 
Physical examinations were made by a busy school doctor who had 
no provision for any type of laboratory examination. To be sure, he 
might in some instances have secured laboratory tests by reference 
to hospitals and clinics, but this is a time-consuming method which 
he did not and probably could not under the conditions follow. 
There was no way of compelling treatment even of those defects dis¬ 
covered in this cursory type of examination. A report with recom¬ 
mendation was sent to the family, reinforced by the teacher’s earnest 
advice, but it was rarely heeded by the careless, ignorant, over¬ 
burdened parents of the children. 

Before the class opened, Miss Ferris was given time to visit the 
home of each child, make the acquaintance of the parents, explain 
the purposes of the class to them, and find out what she could of the 
personal history of each child and his social and educational back¬ 
ground. Such a visit did not, of course, constitute a social investiga¬ 
tion of the family. The staff of the psychological laboratory pos¬ 
sessed one home visitor who did what she could to keep in touch with 
the homes and report changing conditions, but was totally unable 
to undertake family case work. Some of the families were under the 
care of social agencies, but it is scarcely possible for the school 
4 


CONDITIONS OF THE EXPERIMENT. 


5 


as a public agency to refer families for social treatment to private 
organizations, unless the family desires it. 

Even the schoolroom environment was far from good. The class 
was first established in a very old school building with few con¬ 
veniences. However, the room for this class was freshly tinted and 
made attractive by the addition of white curtains, pictures, and some 
beautiful plants which Miss Ferris brought from home. This com¬ 
parative paradise was of short duration. The Government took 
over the building for a training school for soldiers. The only other 
room available in the district was a temporary one-room building in 
an unattractive paved back yard of a crowded school. There was 
nothing in sight but dirt and ugly brick walls. The room had to be 
heated by a stove, with the usual result that part of the children 
were toasted while the rest shivered, and the teacher had to struggle 
with keeping up a fire and contending with coal dirt in addition to 
the already huge supply of Cincinnati grime. The lovely plants 
were allowed to die for lack of care during the Christmas holidays, 
in spite of the fact that the janitor had been offered generous pay to 
look out for them. There was no chance to wash hands and no 
toilet facilities in the building; for these things children had to 
cross the yard to the main building. A freshly tinted wall and some 
curtains did their best to lend a cheerful aspect to the otherwise 
forbidding room. It was usually possible to secure the special ma¬ 
terials for teaching, though not always. 

The second year of the existence of the class (1918-19) was the 
year during which the terrible epidemic of “ flu n swept the country. 
In an effort to help prevent the spread of the infection, the schools 
of Cincinnati were closed for weeks at a time. For children like 
those of the observation class, who were just getting under way with 
school work, the loss of time proved to be so serious a check as to 
cause another year of failure for most of them. In addition to loss 
of time, the war spirit proved to have an unfavorable influence on 
school progress. Many of the children had close relatives in the 
Army, and most of them suffered from the disintegrating atmosphere 
of excitement, uncertainty, and dread which was prevalent at home. 


SCIENTIFIC METHODS AND STANDARDS. 


The mental test records reported in this study are scattered 
through the period from November, 1916, to August, 1921. The 
determination of mental age was made by the Stanford revision of 
the Binet scale 2 in every instance except two, in 1916, in which the 
Yerkes point scale 3 was used. There has been no such consistency 
about the other tests used. In no instance has a diagnosis been made 
with the help of the Binet scale alone, but the supplementary and 
performance tests used have varied with the type of child under 
examination, the standardized tests available at the time the exami- 
tion was made, and the time at the disposal of the examiner. The 
chief sources of norms have been as follows: For the tests included 
in the Pintner and Patterson performance scale 4 we have used the 
norms furnished in the manual since the time of its publication. 
Before that we used the norms furnished under the direction of 
Gertrude Hall, by Marion Collins 5 and her coworkers, in the bureau 
of analysis and investigation of the State Board of Charities of New 
York, for the following tests: Construction puzzles A and B, and 
Healy picture completion No. 1. For norms for the substitution, 
Healy picture completion, Ellis object memory, and cancellation 
tests, we are indebted to Joseph Hayes and Evelyn Dewey, who fur¬ 
nished us with copies of their results long before the publication of 
the book 6 which embodies them. The norms for the easy list of 
opposites (bad) were not considered satisfactory by Mr. Hayes and 
Miss Dewey, and are not included in the published report of their 
work. They did, however, furnish a rough guide which enabled 
us to judge whether a child’s performance was very defective for his 
age, approximately normal, or very superior. Results of the use 
of the easy opposites tests, reported by Marion Collins 5 and by 
Clara Schmitt 7 were also helpful in fixing approximate norms. 
For the Seguin form board we used the Wallin 8 norms. For the 

2 Terman, Lewis M. The measurement of intelligence. Boston, New York, Houghton 
Mifflin Co., 1916, xviii + 362 pp. 

3 Yerkes, Robert, Bridges, James Ward, and Hardwick, Rose. A point scale for meas¬ 
uring mental ability. Baltimore, Warwick & York, 1915. viii + 215 pp. 

4 Pintner, Rudolf, and Patterson, Donald G. A scale of performance tests. New York, 

London, D. Appleton & Co., 1917. ix + 217 pp. 

6 Collins, Marion, and coworkers. Eleven mental tests standardized. Albany, N. Y., 
Bureau of Analysis and Investigation of the State Board of Charities, Gertrude Hall, 
director, 1915. (Eugenics and Social Welfare Bulletin No. 5.) 

6 Dewey, Evelyn, Child, Emily, and Ruml, Beardsley. Methods and results of testing 

school children. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920. xii+176 pp. 

7 Schmitt, Clara. Standardization of tests for defective children. Princeton, N. J., 
and Lancaster, Pa., Psychological Review Co., 1915. (Psychological Monograph No. 83, 
p. 112.) 

8 Wallin, J. E. Wallace. Age norms of psychomotor capacity. Journal of Educational 
Psychology, 1916, pp. 7, 17-24. 

6 




SCIENTIFIC METHODS AND STANDARDS. 


7 


Trabue 9 completion test, Porteus 10 tests, and Healy picture comple¬ 
tion test No. 2 we used the norms furnished by the authors. 11 The 
standardizations of the group tests were made in our own office and 
are valid for Cincinnati, though not always in exact agreement with 
the norms at that time furnished by the authors of the scales. The 
graded opposites test used is one made up and standardized in our 
office. 

The educational tests used in the early part of the work were 
some informal ones made up in our office, based upon the reading 
and arithmetic current in each grade.* Since the beginning of 1920, 
the educational tests used were Gray oral reading, Woody funda¬ 
mentals of arithmetic, and Ayres spelling. In a few of the latest 
examinations the Monroe silent-reading test was added. 

The mental examinations, both group and individual, were all 
made by the psychological laboratory assistants of the vocation 
bureau, working under the supervision of the director. These 
assistants, in addition to their university training, were all trained 
in the laboratory, to secure uniformity of method, before being 
allowed to examine children. The examinations themselves were 
all of a more or less routine type. In no instance was a prolonged 
and repeated examination of the reactions of a single child made. 
The volume of work thrust upon a public-school laboratory is so 
great that it is very difficult to find time and opportunity for 
detailed and exhaustive study of the individual case. In a few 
instances the Stanford test was given at the school, but for the 
most part the entire examination was made at the laboratory of the 
vocation bureau. The group tests reported were given, not for the 
benefit of these children but in the course of a general examination 
of the school or grade. We have taken advantage of them where 
they exist, but have made no attempt to complete them for the 
group. 

Aside from the data thus consciously and intentionally collected, 
the records of the vocation bureau furnished supplementary infor¬ 
mation bearing upon our children, which we have also included in 
this study. It consists in facts about other members of their 
families—brothers and sisters and close relatives—recorded in the 
laboratory, the attendance department, the employment certificate 
office, and the placement office. The juvenile court, the Ohio Humane 
Society, and the Associated Charities also furnished information of 
value. 


9 Trabue, Marion M. Completion—test language scales. New York, Teachers College, 
1910 ix + 118 pp. (Contributions to Education No. 77.) 

10 Porteus, S. D. Porteus tests : The Vineland revision. Training School Publ., Dept, 
of Research’ 1919. No. 16, 44 pp. 

11 In preparing the manuscript for publication, tests have been graded on the norms 
furnished by Pintner and Patterson, and by Dewey, Ruml, and Child wherever they were 


available. 





ANALYSIS OF THE GROUP. 


The children in the class of 16 varied in chronological age from 
6 years and 7 months to 10 years and 4 months. Only one was under 
7; seven were between 7 and 8; one was between 8 and 9; six were 
between 9 and 10; and one was between 10 and 11 years. Not one 
of these children had accomplished as much academic work as that 
prescribed for the first grade, although six of them had spent some 
time in the second grade, and one was in the third. All of the 
children had behind them a background of academic failure., but for 
some of them the period of continued failure had been long enough 
to have a decided effect on self-confidence and attitude toward school 
work. 

The intelligence quotients of tire first test varied from 75 to 95. 
There was one in the range 75 but below 80; five who were 80 but 
below 85; eight who were 85 but below 90; one who was 90; and one 
who was 95. 

While the children are very individual and resist being pigeon¬ 
holed, nevertheless they may be grouped under four heads, ac¬ 
cording to wliat proved to be the dominant cause of the difficulty: 
(1) Children who were neglected; (2) those who were high-grade 
defectives, though their intelligence quotients were still above the 
usually accepted limits for defect; (3) those with special defects 
which seemed to make the acquisition of a given type of knowledge 
unusually difficult; and (4) the psychopathic. 

The distinguishing marks of these groups were as follows : 

1. NEGLECTED CHILDREN. 

The children of this group had failed chiefly because of lack of 
opportunity. They had been absent too much, had moved about, 
or had lived in home conditions so bad and so distracting that it 
was impossible to do normal school work. Although it was out of 
the power of the school to remedy most of the conditions which had 
contributed to the failure of these children, nevertheless by secur¬ 
ing regular attendance, giving the personal attention possible in a 
small class, and above all by surrounding the children with a school¬ 
room atmosphere of encouragement and a real spirit of endeavor, 
it proved possible to make up at least part of what they had lost 
and return them to regular grades in which they were not much 
over age. None of these children were endowed with great native 
capacity. Had they been, they would probably have succeeded mod- 
8 


ANALYSIS OF THE GROUP. 


9 


erately well with school work in spite of their handicaps. The im¬ 
portant point is that their capacity was sufficient for a moderate 
success in school work in spite of handicaps, provided the school 
were able to furnish the most favorable conditions of instruction. 
Nine of our children have been classified under this head. (Cases 
1 to 9, inclusive.) 

2. THE HIGH-GRADE DEFECTIVES. 

The children of the defective group, although their intelligence 
quotients were at the time of the first test above the usual limits 
of defect, failed to respond to instruction with even a normal rate 
of progress. They learned more, needless to say, than they had 
in a large class with no individual attention, but they proved un¬ 
able, even with the most skilled teaching, to progress as fast as the 
usual grade a year. Successive tests showed a falling intelligence 
quotient. Four of our children have been classified under this head. 
(Cases 10 to 13, inclusive.) 

3. CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL DEFECTS. 

These children prove to have difficulties with some one subject 
far greater than those of most children of their intelligence level 
and greater than they themselves had with other subjects. This 
type of handicap can be to some extent overcome, though it is 
doubtful whether the difficulty will ever disappear completely. Both 
of the children classified in this group have a history of serious dis¬ 
eases affecting the nervous system, which may have been the cause 
of the trouble. (Cases 14 and 15.) 

4. PSYCHOPATHIC CHILDREN. 

The psychopathic children constitute the most difficult and, for¬ 
tunately, the smallest group. In spite of what seems an adequate 
intelligence, in spite of occasional flashes of genius, these children 
fail to learn normally and remain erratic and difficult to manage 
in the classroom. They do not belong in any class at present main¬ 
tained by the public schools. Only one of our children has been 
classified under this head. (Case 16.) 


METHODS OF TEACHING. 


The methods used in teaching the children and the types of reac¬ 
tion to instruction will be described in Miss Ferris’s words. 

The normal children in this group failed partly because of non- 
attendance. The problem of helping these is simple. Induce, com¬ 
pel, if you must, their parents to send them to school every day, 
encourage them to forget their failure, set them at work with freedom 
and a little wise direction, and they will take care of themselves. 

The abnormal children failed because of (a) sluggish reactions, 
(b) lack of power to sustain attention, and ( c) inability to retain 
impressions. 

All three defects may have their roots in lack of native interest. 
To give undivided attention to the uninteresting and to remember 
it will tax the mental powers of a brilliant mind. 

But in many cases, it seems to me, the interest is there, but con¬ 
tinually baffled by one or even all of the defects named above. The 
little unfortunate may have concentrated his powers just too late to 
grasp the instruction from the beginning, and presto! change! the 
alert children are ready, are gone to work knowing what to do and 
how to do it, and he sits dismayed, too late to finish now, even though 
the teachers should patiently try to help him—failure again, and no 
fault of his own! 

Or, the mind may eagerly grasp the beginning only to stray away 
and lose itself. Again, it may respond promptly, sustain attention, 
only to lose the impression received within the hour. 

These repeated discouragements may result in the subconscious 
wish to forget, at least not to recall these so distastefully associated 
things. For this reason, among many others, the earlier a special 
child finds his way into a special class, the better for him. Among 
my children it was easy to see that the negative will was strongest 
in those who had spent the greatest number of days in the humilia¬ 
tion of failure. 

These, then, are the things to be taken into account in planning 
academic work for such children: Slowness of response, lack of 
power to sustain attention, inability to retain impressions, possible 
lack of native interest, and from one to four years spent in failure 
resulting in discouragement. 

The work was made as concrete as might be. To do something 
and to have to know a certain thing in order to do it—that is, to 


10 


METHODS OF TEACHING. 


11 


cieate an immediate necessity for a certain bit of knowledge—was 
a favorite way of giving instruction that helped to quicken the 
sluggish. For instance, “ Choose partners, and each partner find out 
how tall the other is.” Onty one or two had any idea of measuring, 
but these were quickly imitated. What a necessity for the use of 
rulers, the knowledge of feet and inches, the whole process of 
measuring. Then, “Tell all about it!” brought some careful and 
enjoyable talking. “ Read it from the board! ” and they noticed it 
now for the first time and read easily, each one filling the blanks 

to accord with his own specific facts: “ I measured-. He is 

- feet-inches tall. -measured me. I am - 

feet-inches tall. I am-inches taller than-. He 

is-inches shorter than I.” 

Interest being still at white heat they wrote the above, glancing 
naturally at the class list on the board for the needed name. A 
few days later, choosing different partners they had a similar lesson 
and wrote about it, referring only to a list of words for the spelling 
but constructing their own sentences. Later a spelling lesson con¬ 
tained these words: Measured, inches, feet, taller, shorter, than. 
After another measuring lesson there were no lists on the board, 
but the record of what they had done was happily, because inde¬ 
pendently, written. Thus arithmetic, language, and spelling of 
words, informed with pleasurable meaning, were all mixed up with a 
jolly bit of social life. The absurdities resulting from mistakes were 
funny, but not humilitating; still no one cared to say the second time 
“ 10 feet ” when he meant “10 inches.” 

For sustaining attention, lessons involving a sequence of any kind, 
as the number names from 1 to 100, the families of numbers, or any¬ 
thing which comes easily and naturally without copying is the best 
material. A very small spark of interest, too, may be fanned to a 
flame by a long piece of work. Only be sure that the teacher sets 
no limit; leave that to the child—he will be almost certain to try to 
surprise you, and in so doing will find pleasure in persistence. 

How to secure enough repetition to fix those fleeting impressions 
and still keep it enjo 3 7 able is a problem indeed. But the weariness, 
fortunately, is almost altogether for the teacher, for the child finds 
freshness each time the forgotten thing is renewed. Choosing his 
own way of learning, resorting to auto drill, going to different pupils 
for tutoring until he has perfected his undertaking—these are some 
of the things he may do. 

The constant effort of the teacher was to find ways in which the 
children could tutor one another in small groups. A sufficient 
amount of repetition, without undue fatigue, was best secured by 
this group method. For instance, in studying spelling, one child 

30526°—23 - 2 











12 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


in the group pronounced the word and the others spelled it aloud 
in unison, saying the word after spelling it. This was repeated 
five times while the successive spellings were told off on the fingers 
of the left hand. Then followed a short period of silence, after 
which the same process was repeated, except that instead of spelling 
the words out loud, the chidren whispered the spelling. On the third 
trial the words were not even whispered, but spelled in the mind 
alone. This type of exercise helps the children master the silent 
method of studying and gain a conception of a mental process as dis¬ 
tinct from its expression. 

For drill in writing, the words of the previous exercise were later 
used as follows: One child wrote one of the words from memory, 
and then quickly erased it. The rest of the group then wrote the 
word five times in a neat column. Then another child remembered 
and wrote another word, which was again erased, and then written 
five times 1 by the group—and so on until all the words had been 
remembered and written in columns. 

The children’s names furnished a basis for group drill in phonics. 
At a time when each child knew his own written name, but not the 
names of his schoolmates, the teacher wrote the names of a group 
on the board, pointed to one of them, and asked some child to sound 
it out and then lead the child whose name it was to a certain place. 
This was repeated until they were all arranged in a line. Then one 
child went down the line, naming each child and then passed to the 
board and tried to read the list of names. If he failed to sound out 
the name, the child to whom it belonged stepped out of the line. A 
variation of the game was to have each child wear his name written 
large on a card and suspended down his back. Then when the reader 
of names at the board failed to get one, the owner of the name turned 
his back. The game was of value also in teaching proper names to 
the children. Their social relations were so casual that they were 
apt to play together a long time without taking the pains to learn 
names. They were quite content to address one another as “ You kid 
with the red sweater,” or “ You girl with a blue ribbon.” 

Games in pairs were also devised. A pair of children took turns in 
writing words on the board to be named by the other partner. The 
words might be from memory or taken from a list on the board. 
Each time a word was correctly named, the child scored. The one 
with the highest score when 20 words had been written won. 

An arithmetic game was played in pairs, with the aid of rather 
large colored sticks. One child constructed a problem with the 
sticks on the table. He arranged groups of tens, and placed the 
units separately. Thus IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIII was 25. Three 
two-place numbers were thus constructed and a ruler placed under 


METHODS OF TEACHING. 


13 


them. The second child then read the numbers from the stick con¬ 
struction and wrote them down in digits. The first child then added 
his numbers by sweeping them all together below the ruler and 
counting them, while the second one added the digits in the usual 
way, and wrote down the answer below the line. The two sets of 
results had to coincide. If they did not, each child went over the 
other’s work to try to find the error. 

Discouragement, that worst foe of both teacher and pupils, must be 
met by bright, warm optimism. A half playful but altogether con¬ 
vincing “ Yes, you can! ” will do wonders. Enthusiasm for every 
success, a hearty handshake over a perfect lesson, plenty of fun, and 
good times for everybody should mark the day. Anything that 
might wake some little sluggish weak soul and “ lead it forth to take 
hold on the strength and beauty of life” should be taken into that 
schoolroom if it is possible to get it there. 

Doubtless a special course of study is needed for special children, 
of the first two grades at least. The words of the basic text em¬ 
bodied in fresh stories would appeal and encourage. Supplementary 
books are the next best thing but not satisfactory on the whole. The 
great aim of all the lessons is to get these children to study—to get, 
not to receive. The teacher draws a long sigh of relief when she 
sees a child absorbed for the first time in study, in really reading 
a book, for she knows that for him the worst is over. 

These are some of the methods and devices used in class instruc¬ 
tion in 1917-18, given in detail: 

Sometimes when an interesting object or event had been under 
consideration, the teacher would keep in mind some significant 
sentence and at the close of the discussion would say, for instance, 
“ John said that the butterfly had lost its way and could not find 
Eden Park. Who can say that again?” After the sentence had 
been carefully repeated, a volunteer would write it on the board, 
all the pupils assisting in keeping the correct sequence of the words 
and sounding out the spelling of the new words. This work seemed 
for these children, to underlie the sensing of three things: The 
make-up of real words; the significant sequence of words; and the 
visible form of a real thought. In other words, the construction 
of a written sentence was for many of them their first laying hold 
upon the use (the purpose) of written words. Many of them showed 
sudden interest in phonics when they saw that this was the way to 
get a needed word, and all read very much more intelligently after 
acquiring ease in constructing—not copying sentences. The capital 
and the period also gave the introduction to form, so that this may 
be called a fundamental exercise underlying phonics, reading, 
spelling, language, and the purpose of written letters. 


14 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


Here are some of the lessons which held the interest of these 
children well: 

After showing books containing colored plates of beasts, birds, 
insects, and reptiles, and talking of their characteristics, these words 
were written upon the board, pronounced, spelled, and left for 
reference: Robin, Hen, Horse, Owl, Elephant, Dog, Bird, Beast. 

The children classified the animals named, in good sentences, 
orally: “ The horse is a beast,” “ The owl is a bird,” and then wrote 
them. Simple as this seems, it requires constant vigilance against 
reflex writing of “ beast ” or “ bird,” real keeping in mind the char¬ 
acteristics—real imaging of the creatures. In later lessons insects 
and reptiles were added. 

The same form of lesson is used with shape words, color words, 
size words, taste words, etc. These lessons should be used at long 
intervals. 

A far better motivated lesson in color, however, and a favorite 
with the child is this: Have flags, each tagged with the name of its 
country, or failing this, colored plates of flags, or colored flags on the 
blackboard. Have these questions on the board read by the pupils, 
then answered by referring to the flags: What are the colors of our 
flag? What are the colors of the flag of France? Of Italy? Of 
Belgium? etc. Each answer must be a complete sentence. This 
means that each child must rise and pass to the flags to observe the 
tags, then record his observation. Color words should also be on the 
board, pronounced, and left for reference. This “ telling the truth 
with the pencil” concerning the beloved flags is undertaken by the 
children with a reverent joy and carried out with childish devotion. 

Memorizing verses and writing them from memory on the board, 
comparing and criticizing from the comparison with the poem in 
the book, was found very beneficial. This is for the most of the chil¬ 
dren, once they have learned to read, a veritable pastime. 

Asking questions orally, while the class writes answers, and ask¬ 
ing for help in spelling the difficult words is a good exercise. The 
teacher should always reply by sounding the words slowly and by 
writing them on the board if they are partially unphonetic. The ques¬ 
tions should be really interesting questions. The children should en¬ 
ter heartily into a record of their experiences in answer to a question 
such as this: “ What did you do after school yesterday ? ” 

In teaching reading and spelling, the methods found most help¬ 
ful were the following: The children memorized short poems, which 
were then written on the board. Word cards for all the words of 
the poem were prepared and the children picked out each word by a 
comparison with the board. The poem was constructed in this way 
with the w r ord cards again and again, until it could be done inde- 


METHODS OF TEACHING. 


15 


pendently of the board. Then races were started to see who could 
construct the poem from the cards fastest. When the word cards 
had been fairly well mastered in this way, the “word card game” 
was started. The children gathered about a low table; and a child, 
who knew confidently all of the words, took all of the cards and 
threw one on the table. Whoever named the word correctly first 
got the card. Whoever guessed, that is, named the word wrong got 
a blank slip. When all the w 7 ords had been given out, the one who 
had the most cards won, and the one who had the most blank slips 
was last, even though he may have taken more w T ords than some 
of the others, for one must learn to look w r ell before answering*. 

In another form of lesson sentences were built with the word 
cards by each child in turn for the other children to read. 

After a few w r ords had been mastered, we learned the letters. The 
old A B C song, which most children already know by rote, was 
written on the board and sung while the letters were pointed out. 
Then finding out the names of the letters in a word by reference to 
the rote song is great fun. 

Learning the letters is one of the joys of child life. The pleasure 
of mastering the alphabet comes not from achievement alone. It 
is satisfaction of word hunger, the fitting of auditory and visible 
possessions of the rote song to those familiar marks elsewhere on 
the blackboard and in the books, i. e., giving names to familiar 
objects. 

Curiously enough many of these children when they enter the 
class can not only copy script but can copy in good script and with 
surprising accuracy whole pages of print, not one word or letter of 
which they can name. One must wonder in what curious images 
they think while working at what is, for them, altogether devoid of 
meaning. And they seem to enjoy it! It was, however, one of 
the deadening things they were not permitted to do after the teacher 
discovered that it w r as meaningless. 

Rote spelling aloud, that is, spelling words repeatedly until the 
succession of letters is fixed in the mind of the ear-minded child, 
may stand some luckless little fellow in place of memory of visual 
word forms . 12 Similar words, such as “ has ” and “ his,” have to be 

ia Two observations, one made by Mrs. Woolley, in the case of a very young superior 
child who was Earning to read, and one by Margaret Drummond (The dawn of mind, 
London, Edward Arnold, 1919, page 167), in teaching a child somewhat similar to ours 
of the observation, class, tend to confirm Miss Ferris’s experience that rote spelling 
sometimes helps children through certain stages of learning to read better than other 
methods. The little 4-year-old superior girl went through a stage of learning in which 
she knew a great many words when she heard them spelled aloud, or spelled them 
aloud herself, which she could not recognize by sight alone. In her case, this stage 
of learning was of comparatively brief duration. Miss Drummond found, more or less 
by accident, that mechanical spelling aloud helped her pupil, who was a victim of 
injury of the brain at birth, more than any other method. 



16 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


learned in this way by many of the children. These words are 
practically unphonetic for the child until he has mastered the short 
vowels and the second sound of s, but they are among the first words 
he must use. Children can and should get the spelling habit; it is 
natural. Even the nonsense syllables, such as “ Eeny, meeny, miny, 
mo,” satisfy a mental desire. Spelling a word orally, pronouncing 
it at the end, while looking at it until it is fixed, then spelling it five 
times aloud, turning down a finger for each time, is invaluable 
training for these children. 

Some of the children are able to read a little when they come, 
but they do not care to read. Mental fatigue ensues in a few 
moments. For these there is nothing to do but read, read aloud, come 
to the teacher for the unknown word, receive her answer in phonics, 
or make out the word from the context in answer to her question. 
Heading aloud while all the rest are reading aloud seems to train 
the inhibitory powers and strengthen persistence as well as to 
interpret to the child the visual sentences whose meaning he can 
grasp only through the ear. Silent reading comes later, but it 
comes. In a short time the children who turn from a book in 
dreary helplessness read eagerly. The reading lesson, in which the 
child studies out and masters new words, should be short, but he 
should be constantly encouraged to read easier things at much greater 
length for pleasure. If his advanced work is in the second reader, he 
should be given a variety of first readers for amusement. In mas¬ 
tering new material, it is wise to read the story aloud first to the 
children. The process of acquiring new words from the context 
thus becomes much easier, and a word thus gained is delightfully 
illuminated for the child and more apt to be remembered. It is wise, 
too, to show the pictures before beginning to read, unless the children 
are to be asked to illustrate the story themselves. To know that 
they are to be asked to draw a picture of the story, which will then 
be compared with that in the book, elicits the closest attention to 
descriptions. An allied exercise is to read a story, telling the 
children that they will be asked to supply a title for it. 

Word fitting, or memorizing a poem, then repeating it and point¬ 
ing to each word as it is spoken, is one of the best sharpeners of the 
eyes. For instance, the little verse beginning, “ Stop, stop, pretty 
water,” is written on the board thus: 


Stop water 

Stop brook 


pretty 

bright 

running 


Said 

Mary 

That 

Away 


METHODS OF TEACHING. 


17 


The children recite the verse, pointing to each word as it is 
spoken. Placing words of equal length together in columns facili¬ 
tates the finding of the word. The absurdities that would result from 
pointing to the wrong word make a merry game of this lesson. 

A whole set of difficult words was mastered by the simple device 
of bringing them from subordinate to first place in a little story 
written upon the board and thoroughly enjoyed by the children. 
This is the story: 

HARD WORDS. 

Which are the hardest words we have had to learn, boys? 
“Could” and “would” and “should”; “have,” “has,” and “had” 
are pretty hard. But “ which,” “ what,” “ who,” “ whose,” and 
“ when ” are just as hard. “ This ” and “ that,”' “ these ” and “ those,” 
“ then ” and “ them ” are hard, too. But we can get them all, can’t 
we, boys? 

In addition to the usual number work, we found the use of dominoes 
(real ones) beneficial. We have a set 1 containing the numbers to 12, 
of which double 12 is the highest number. The children learn to rec¬ 
ognize the numbers readily: The 3 threes for 9, the 3 fours less 1 
for 11, etc. They also enjoy recording the number facts from them. 
Beginners read from the domino 2+1=3. When asked to write this, 
they can not because they do not know how to make the figures. The 
necessity being created, the figures and signs are given them, and 
very shortly they are recording all the easier combinations. We 
also play the game of dominoes. 

Carrying tens we teach with cubes thus: 6+5. Six cubes are placed 
below 5 cubes; the 10 perfected, the remaining block is laid beside 
the 10, read 10+1=11, and represented with figures, the pupil show¬ 
ing which figure means the 10, which the 1. 

The work is carried up into addition of larger numbers in the 

same way as in ^9 The numbers are constructed with tens and units 

oZ 

of cubes; the 10 is made of 9+2 and placed above the 2 tens and 
added with the tens in-the second column. 

Number stories are told as the teacher writes the problem on the 
board thus: “A man had 5,368 sheep on a mountain. He sold 2,246 
sheep; how many were left? Would there be more sheep or fewer 
sheep on the mountain?” The children answer, “fewer.” Then 
what must we do to these numbers? The lower means part of the 
same sheep as the upper. 

5,368 sheep on the mountain. 

2,246 sheep sold. 


sheep left. 



18 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


They draw lines or use cubes to make the number families and 
then try to say them as rapidly as they can already say the fives 
and tens. This is a merry pastime. 

In teaching writing, the letters were made very large, using the 
spaces between the lines of ordinary paper for spacing. 

Drawing was taught by copying, coloring, and making illustra¬ 
tions for stories. 

Gymnastics must be very simple. Many of these children have not 
as yet sufficient motor control for rhythmic movements except those 
of the most elementary type. Exercises involving slightly compli¬ 
cated rhythms, such as those given to third-grade children, proved 
to be beyond the powers of these children when they were tried with 
a third-grade group. Desirable as motor training would be, not 
much of it could be done under the conditions of our observation 
class. 

One very helpful incentive to bringing certain essential things 
to perfection is this individual record. To have his name checked 
in the column as having absolutely mastered the bit of work indi¬ 
cated is triumph indeed. The record may be extended indefinitely. 
In all cases the habit stage is reached when the check is made. This 
is a small specimen. 










































CASE REPORTS. 


In presenting the case reports they have been arranged in groups 
according to classification. The first set of nine cases comprises the 
children who were suffering primarily from neglect. The second set 
of four cases is composed of the defectives. The third set of two 
cases is made up of the sufferers from special defects, and the final 
set—one case—is a psychopath. Needless to say, the cases are not all 
clear cut. Some of the children in the first group are of very 
limited ability. Some of them, too, show signs of slightly psycho¬ 
pathic conditions. Some of the children classed as defective are 
also to some extent psychopathic. What we have tried to do is to 
make the classification according to what seemed to us the most 
important cause of failure, recognizing the fact that often there 
were other contributing causes. 

CHILDREN SUFFERING PRIMARILY FROM NEGLECT. 

CASE 1. 

When first examined in February, 1917, at the age of 9 years and 5 
months, Jean had a mental age of 7 years and 7 months; and an 
intelligence quotient of 80. Her physical condition was good. She 
was in the first grade and was a bad failure in first-grade work. In 
spite of her low intelligence quotient in her first test, the examiner 
was under no temptation to regard Jean as a possible defective. 
Her performance and supplementary tests were all above the level 
of her mental age on the Stanford revision scale. In Healy con¬ 
struction puzzle B she had a 13-year record, in the Pintner cube test 
a 10-year record, in picture completion an 8-year record, and in sub¬ 
stitution and opposites an 8-year record. She had a competent man¬ 
ner, and a clear cut, practical knowledge of family conditions which 
gave a definite impression of ability above that suggested by test 
results. 

The family had lived in Cincinnati but a short time and had 
moved here from Kentucky. Jean’s account of her school experience 
in the South, later confirmed by her mother, showed that of the 
three years of supposed schooling, one had been spent suffering from 
malaria, and two in very irregular attendance at country schools 
where the term was short and the teaching at best very indifferent. 
Jean’s own comment on her instruction was as follows: “ They never 

19 


20 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


teached no writin’ ner figgers; tliey just teached readin’.” Her coun¬ 
try life, however, had given her a background of experience with ani¬ 
mals, plants, and out of doors that many of the children lacked, and 
which was a real advantage in understanding what she read. 

Her teacher’s first view of Jean was at home, where a family of 
eight people occupied two rooms, and here is her comment: “ She 
was standing in a wretched dirty basement among a lot of unkempt 
little brothers and sisters, attending to her business of caring for 
them. She looked strong and rugged and happy.” Jean’s parents 
were illiterate. The father proudly told the principal of the school 
that he himself had never been in jail. He worked as a teamster for 
the support of his family of eight children, of whom three were 
younger and four older than Jean. The one next younger than Jean, 
John, was also examined in the laboratory. His first examination 
showed an intelligence quotient similar to Jean’s—79. After a year 
in the observation class his intelligence quotient went up to 82, and 
after a second year to 87. It was difficult to secure regular school 
attendance for Jean, Her mother was ill frequently, and Jean and 
the younger children had the mumps. Even when they were well, 
it was hard to persuade the mother of the importance of sending 
Jean regularly when she found her so very useful at home. The 
twins of 3 years, Idey and Ivey by name, were Jean’s special charge. 
However, a sufficiently regular attendance was finally secured to 
make sure of school progress. Jean fell upon her work with the same 
cheerful faithfulness which attended her home duties. She could 
not write and knew nothing of numbers, but had a fair start at 
reading when she entered the observation class. Her deficiencies were 
rapidly made good. Whatever was presented to her she received 
and absorbed, and came back for more. The teacher allowed her 
to choose her own work and use her own methods. All she needed 
was suggestions and help in hard places. Before long she was writ¬ 
ing sentences, spelling word families, and reading intelligently in 
the fourth reader. The number work was most difficult for her, but 
by the end of the year she had mastered enough of that to be told 
that she could enter the fifth grade the following year provided she 
would attend summer school. Her answer was: “ Oh, I can’t do that! 
The twins are just at the age when they run away. Mamma can’t take 
care of them. I must stay at home and look after them.” And she 
did, in spite of a very real desire to go to school and make her 
grade. 

A second mental test' made at end of the school year gave her a 
mental age on the Stanford revision of 9 years and 4 months, and 
an intelligence quotient of 86, six points above her previous test. 
Her arithmetic had reached a third-grade standard and she had a 


CASE REPORTS. 


21 


good record in association by opposites, and a fifth-grade record 
in Trabue sentence completion. She failed in construction puzzles 
A and B in which she had succeeded before, but had a 12-year score 
in the substitution test. 

Jean was placed in a regular fourth grade after a year in the 
observation class. Unfortunately her first year in the fourth grade 
was the year of the “ flu,” when the schools were closed for months 
at a time. Jean failed to get the drill in arithmetic which she still 
lacked and was therefore not promoted to the fifth grade. During 
her second year in the fourth grade she did very good work. 

Jean was not tested in 1919, but, in 1920, her second year in the 
fourth grade, on her third test her intelligence quotient was 83. 
She had a sixth-grade score in oral reading and poor fourth-grade 
scores in arithmetic. She was examined for a fourth time in March, 
1921, at the age of 13 years and 7 months, while she was in the 
fifth grade. Her mental age was 11| years on the Stanford revision 
of the Binet scale, and her intelligence quotient 85. Since the same 
form of test had been used so often, the national intelligence scale 
was given as a check. On this standard she had a score of 109 and 
a mental age of 12 years and 8 months. In both of these tests! 
Jean’s ability in language was conspicuous. In her academic tests of 
spelling, composition, silent reading, and writing she had records 
somewhat above a fifth-grade average. In arithmetic the test was not 
complete. In the part she took, the record was that of a superior 
fourth-grade child. The comment of the examiner is as follows: 

The quality of her work is especially remarkable. Her method of work 
and her power of attention are excellent. The fact that she has been put 
mentally on her feet and made a success instead of a failure showed the 
work of the observation class to have been worth while. 

If it had not been for a broken year and the twins, Jean would 
have been not at all retarded instead of two years. Her last teacher 
reported that her fifth-grade work was excellent and that she had 
been promoted to the upper division of the sixth grade for the 
fall of 1921. 

In the summer of 1921, Miss Ferris visited Jean’s home. She 
found the family, consisting now of the mother and five children, 
living in two very dirty rooms, first-floor rear, of an old tenement. 
The father had deserted the family for another woman. “ It’s just 
ignorance,” said the wife bitterly. The man still contributed to the 
support of the family, and the two older brothers worked and 
brought home their money. When Miss Ferris told the mother how 
proud of Jean her teachers were, she said with emotion, “ Oh, I am 
glad to know that! That’s all there is for Jean—just the interest 
such folks as teachers can take in her.” She seemed not to know 


22 treatment of young school failures. 

that Jean’s essay on the “ Community Chest, ’ when read anony- 
mously with a number of others, some of them from eighth-grade 
children, had been chosen unanimously by the teachers as the best 
in the school. Jean had never told her—perhaps because she knew 
instinctively that her illiterate mother would fail to understand the 
importance of it. 

Jean is the type of child for whom the sympathetic, understanding 
help of teachers can do most. She is a valiant little soul, and she. 
can and will do good work if she is given a chance. She needs help 
about matters outside the usual province of the school. Her clothes 
are wretched, and there is no hope of betterment through the mother, 
who lias no sewing machine and seems to know nothing of either 
sewing or laundry work. Jean herself has the kind of competence 
which will enable her to take hold of these matters for herself if 
she is taught and stimulated. 

Our expectation for Jean is that she will finish the elementary 
school, and that, if permitted, she can easily add to it either trade 
training or part, at least, of the high school. Her intelligence is 
more limited than that of most children who finish high school, but 
she is constantly surprising us with what her reliability and power 
of application can accomplish. She will make a fine, competent, 
good-tempered, sensible, and reasonably well-educated woman. The 
observation class, we believe, served to secure to her at least three 
more grades of school training than she could have secured without 
it, and saved her from the ruinous experience of further failures. 


Case 


23 


CASE REPORTS. 


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24 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 2. 

William was 7 years and 5 months when he was first brought to 
our attention and had failed completely in second-grade work, in 
spite of having done fairly well in the first grade. His mental age on 
the Stanford revision was 6 years and 5 months, and his intelligence 
quotient 86. In one supplementary test—the Porteous maze test— 
he made a 9-year record. The Pintner cube test was a 5-year record. 
In association by opposites he failed to grasp the meaning of the 
test. He had a 7J-y ear record on the Seguin form board, but failed 
in construction puzzles A and B. He could read a little and write a 
little, but had no interest in doing it. 

It was impossible to look at William without knowing that his 
physical condition was part of the problem. His skin was colorless 
and every movement weak and listless, his voice thin and lifeless. 
He looked hungry. His whole figure, from his noble little white face 
to his weary feet, suggested anemia. The school physician reported 
tonsils and adenoids in such a state that they were a serious menace 
to health, and in some measure accounted for his continual hunger. 
The doctor had been trying for three years to persuade the parents 
to permit an operation, but they refused. 

William’s home was the third floor rear in a building mainly occu¬ 
pied by a saloon. His father worked as a railroad hand and sup¬ 
ported the family. He was a cruel man who frequently beat the 
children when he was drunk. William’s little brother in the kinder¬ 
garten was heard to say that he would not care if his father should 
die. The mother stayed at home and supposedly cared for the chil¬ 
dren. In spite of the fact that she was a vigorous-looking woman, 
her small domain of two rooms was wretchedly dirty and very poorly 
furnished. She produced the impression of being extremely ignorant 
and possibly defective. William was the oldest of four children. 
The three younger ones were as pale and pitiful as he. The entire 
family of six slept in one room with the windows closed. 

At the beginning of the year William seemed unable to do any¬ 
thing except under the immediate stimulus of the teacher. When 
she was occupied with the others, he just sat and watched the other 
children. He seemed constantly hungry and was always dirty, but 
in spite of it he had a native refinement of manner which was very 
winsome. One day, when the children were given crackers as a treat, 
William was discovered with tears in his eyes, holding his cracker 
under his desk. “ You mean to take it to little brother? ” asked the 
teacher. “ Yes,” said William. “ But there is another for you to 
take to little brother,” the teacher assured him, and only then would 
the hungry little fellow eat, 


CASE REPORTS. 


25 


It took almost four months to get the child roused to do anything 
like work. Every method and device was tried, but nothing could 
interest him more than a few moments. By the end of four months 
a little impression had been made on the home with regard to the 
necessity for better food and sleeping with open windows. He began 
to overcome his listlessness. The number work caught his interest 
first. He also liked to write verses on the board from memory, and 
finally fell to reading stories with real joy. Phonics he had already 
mastered during his successful year in the first grade. Building with 
the anchor blocks and learning to name and compare geometrical 
figures helped his sense of form. He learned to fold circles into 
sixths and cut out snowflakes. Addition and carrying tens he 
learned by constructing the numbers with cubes. Between January 
and April he made up all the work of the second grade and that of 
the first part of the third grade, so that he could enter a regular 
third grade. His progress was surprising in that it hung fire so 
long. Everything that had been done for him seemed to take cumu¬ 
lative effect long after his teacher had despaired of helping him. 

When retested the following June William had a mental age of 
8 years and 3 months, and an intelligence quotient of 94, an increase 
of eight points. His supplementary tests were also much better. 
This time he was able to understand the idea of association by oppo¬ 
sites, and made a record of 37.5 on an easy list. This was not normal 
for his age, but a decided improvement over being unable to grasp 
the idea. Construction puzzles A and B he solved more promptly 
than the average child of 12 years, and his Pintner cube record was 
as good as the average 16-year-old, showing fine power of attention. 
In substitution his record was very little below normal for his age. 
The whole increase in mental level was very impressive. His work 
in the third grade from April to June was excellent. He was pro¬ 
moted to a regular fourth grade, but was sent the following year to 
an open-air class. His stay in the open-air class was brief—only 
about three months. William’s mother was indignant because “ they 
put him into a tub of water every day,” and because they said he was 
not well fed at home. She had him returned to his own school. The 
change of schools and the broken year, due to the epidemic, meant 
that William did not pass the fourth grade. 

During his second year in the fourth grade he was examined twice, 
once by an individual examination and once by a group test. In 
the individual test, given in January, his mental age was 8 years 
and 9 months, and his intelligence quotient 84, 10 points below the 
previous one. The only supplementary tests given were the educa¬ 
tional ones. His reading was about a fourth-grade record, spelling 
third grade, and arithmetic rather below fourth grade. He could not 


26 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


do long division. On the National intelligence scale, in March, he had 
a score of 35, which gave a mental age of 8 years and 5 months, and 
an intelligence quotient of 80. This time he passed the fourth grade, 
though his teacher was doubtful about promoting him. During his 
year in the fifth grade he did much better and his work was satisfac¬ 
tory. Meanwhile, perhaps due to prohibition, the family fortunes 
were improved. They moved to much better quarters. For the first 
time the children had adequate lunches, and the evidences of more 
money spent on the family were unmistakable. William responded 
quickly to the improved conditions. The comment of his fifth-grade 
teacher is that while William was not a very strong pupil, he was so 
thorough in his work and so determined to get everything himself 
that she felt justified in promoting him to the upper division of the 
sixth grade for the fall of 1921. 

Our last view of him was in July, 1921, selling papers on the street. 
He was happy and alert. All his old listless manner was gone. 
William has real character. A genuine possibility of happiness lies 
in his patient endurance of the ills of his lot,-his faithful industry, 
and his appreciation of good and beautiful things. Next to Jean we 
feel that William appropriated most from the observation class. He 
is at present but one year behind for his age. The observation class 
undoubtedly prevented further retardation (how much we can not 
say), and gave him a spirit of independent endeavor which is still 
noticeable. His abilities are obviously limited, but his real spirit 
of work will probably carry him through the elementary school. 
There is every reason to expect him to be a useful citizen in some 
phase of industry. 


Case 


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28 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 3. 

Henry we first saw at the age of 7 years (March, 1917). He had 
spent a year in kindergarten and a year in the first' grade, but had 
failed in everything except writing. His mental test gave a result 
of 5 years and 10 months on the Stanford revision, and an intelli¬ 
gence quotient of 84. His supplementary tests were irregular. He 
failed completely in substitution and could not grasp the meaning 
of opposites. In picture completion he made a poor 8-year record, in 
construction puzzle B an 8-year record, and in the Pintner cube test 
a 6-year record. 

Henry was a frail-looking child with big staring eyes. His gen¬ 
eral physical condition was fair but he suffered from fearfully en¬ 
larged tonsils which the parents refused to have removed. His 
teeth were in bad condition. The doctor reported red spots in the 
roof of his mouth, enlarged glands, and notched teeth which sug¬ 
gested the possibility of specific disease. He had not learned to 
talk until he was 5 years old and he still talked baby talk. 

Henry’s home was in a first-floor rear tenement, a miserable 
place, where there was little sunlight and the air was foul from old 
buildings, garbage cans, and the dirt of the alley; Henry was the 
youngest of four children and was much petted and indulged. 

The father produced the impression of a neat, industrious man. 
He was an employee of a white-lead works where he had been for 
20 years. The mother was a flighty little woman, with little or no 
education—an inveterate movie fan. Her habit was to take Henry 
to a movie every night and then let him sleep frequently in the 
morning rather than wake him up and send him to school. It took 
the combined efforts of the father, the teacher, and the truant of¬ 
ficer to convince Henry’s mother that the State, if necessary, would 
step in to break up this regime and secure regular school attendance. 
The idea that the State held her responsible for seeing to it that the 
child got an education was a new idea. Henry’s teacher was in¬ 
clined to attribute his peculiar habit of staring into* space to his 
prolonged movie experience. There were three older children liv¬ 
ing, one married, one living at home and working, and one in school. 
Three children were dead. The sister who worked had completed 
the eighth grade, as had also the married brother. The brother who 
was still in school was in the sixth grade at the age of 12 years 
(1919), and had an intelligence quotient of 107 on an Otis group test. 

When Henry entered the class his academic accomplishment con¬ 
sisted in copying neatly from script without knowing a word or 
letter that he copied and in performing additions under 10. He 
proved to be a willing, lovable little pupil. W 7 henever he was told 
to do anything, he responded with a hearty “ aw wight.” But for 



CASE REPORTS. 


29 


all his application the word impressions were immediately lost, and 
letters would not connected with either sounds or names. He had 
a way of losing the very thing he was drilling on, but he also had a 
way of recovering it. For instance, when drilling on the family “ me, 
he, be,” he would suddenly lose the sound e and the name of the letter. 
He would then turn patiently to the word t-h-e, wflieh by some 
inexplicable hook or crook he had managed to memorize. c< T-h-e ” 
he would say, and then turn back to his family with the sound e 
and go on until he lost it again. This sometimes happened as many 
as 15 times in one recitation, only to be repeated in the next. This 
method indicated to the teacher that rote spelling aloud, until the 
sequence of letters or sounds was fixed, was the way to begin. The 
next step was to fit the auditory series to the visual, pointing care¬ 
fully to each letter. Henry had a good verbal memory, and the 
same method was of course tried of fitting the known word to the 
word form, but it proved to be impossible for him to retain and 
recognize visually the more complex word forms. It was six 
months before the rote spelling method finally succeeded in estab¬ 
lishing the connection between letter forms and sounds. From that 
point on mere duty gave place to pleasure in lessons. After eight 
months the teacher’s comment is: “ Most satisfactory awakening and 
progress.” At the end of the school year Henry had mastered first- 
grade reading. The number work had been easy from the start. 
Although ready for regular second-grade work, Henry was retained 
in the observation class the following year in the hope that he could 
make more than normal progress. 

When examined in June, 1918, after a year in the observation 
class, Henry’s mental age on the Stanford test was 7 years and 6 
months, and his intelligence quotient had risen from 84 to 91. His 
supplementary tests were also much better. He not only understood 
the meaning of opposites, but made a record of 62.5 per cent ac¬ 
curacy on an easy list—a fair record for his age. His substitution 
test was almost normal for his age. The memory page was done as 
well as the average 10-year child. He failed again in construction 
puzzle A but succeeded excellently in construction puzzle B. The 
Pintner cube test gave a 7-year record. He still had the habit of 
gazing into space, and seemed to find it hard to concentrate attention, 
but his progress was remarkable. 

When Henry came back after the summer vacation for his second 
year in the observation class, Miss Ferris was dismayed to find that 
he had forgotten everything that he had learned. It was necessary 
to start all over again and to go through once more the process of 
stimulating him to effort. It was January before he got another 
start. In December of that year his father died. He had finally 
succumbed to lead poisoning. The father left enough insurance to 


30 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


better the family fortunes, and the mother received a mother’s pen¬ 
sion. The family moved to a neat, airy apartment where there were 
flowers in the windows. Meanwhile, Henry’s mother had joined the 
school mother’s club and attended the meetings regularly. Her 
whole attitude toward life, toward the school, and toward Henry’s 
education was transformed. She was better dressed and more serious 
minded. The child was no longer taken out at night, and his school 
progress became a matter of real concern. 

Henry was assigned to a regular third grade after his two years 
in the observation class. Our hope of more rapid progress in the 
second year was not fulfilled because of the broken year of the in¬ 
fluenza epidemic. In January, 1920, while in the third grade, he was 
given his third mental examination. His mental age proved to be 8 
years and 6 months, and his intelligence quotient 86. His reading and 
arithmetic were of third-grade rank, and his spelling second-grade. 

Henry passed from the third to the fourth grade. His fourth 
mental test was given in March, 1921, while in the fourth grade, at 
the age of 11 years. On the Stanford scale his mental age was 9 
years and 5 months, and his intelligence quotient 85. No supple¬ 
mentary tests were given except the educational ones. His oral read¬ 
ing was of fourth-grade level, with an excellent knowledge of what 
he had read. His fundamentals of arithmetic were fourth-grade 
performances. A group test, given with the national intelligence 
scale during the same month, rated Henry higher—a mental age of 
10 years and 7 months, and an intelligence quotient of 95. His 
teacher reported that his work was faithful, though not brilliant. 
He was promoted to the fifth grade. 

In the summer of 1921 Henry wrote a letter to Miss Ferris in which 
he told of the approaching marriage of his older sister. The family 
point of view about it was very revealing of the economic grind 
in which they had existed. Henry wrote that his brother had said 
to him that there would be one less to work when his sister was mar¬ 
ried, and he said yes, but there would also be one less to feed. 

A visit made somewhat later found the home still well maintained. 
The mother went out to work by the day several days a week and 
the boys sold papers to help. On the days when the mother worked 
the boys stayed with the married sister, who lived near by. 

Henry is now safely started on a school career which, while it 
will probably not be brilliant, will doubtless take him through the 
elementary school and give him the basis for trade training if he 
wishes it. His habit of faithful work seems well established. How 
long his deadlock in mental progress might have lasted if it were not 
for the observation class, it is impossible to say; but it is very im¬ 
probable that he would have gotten a real start if he had been left 
in the regular class. 


Case 


CASE REPORTS. 


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32 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 4. 

Vivian we first knew at the age of 7 years and 7 months (March 
1917). She had spent two years in the first grade, the first of which 
had not amounted to much because of very irregular attendance, and 
was a failure in March of the second year. Her test gave her on 
the Stanford revision a mental age of 6 years and 10 months and an 
intelligence quotient of 90. Her supplementary tests were no better. 
She failed completely in construction puzzle A and in association 
by opposites. In picture completion she was a bad failure and in 
the Pintner cube test she made a 6-year record. Substitution she 
could perform, but abnormally slowly for her age and with errors 
on the memory page. The Ellis object memory test was below an 
8-year level. 

Vivian was a beautiful, attractive little golden-haired child, with 
a clear skin and blue eyes. She was of normal size and had no 
outstanding physical defect. There were some suggestions of under¬ 
feeding and her teeth needed attention. She gave the impression of 
being younger than she was. Vivian’s face was serious in repose, but 
she met your eyes with a shy, sweet smile. Her shyness, timidity, 
and unwillingness to trouble the teacher for special help when she 
did not understand were, perhaps, responsible for her failure. 

Vivian had a good home. The father, a night engineer at the 
power house, supported the family of the mother and three chil¬ 
dren—an older brother in the sixth grade, Vivian, and a little 
brother of 3 years. One other child had died of convulsions in 
infancy. The mother was a young, steady, conscientious woman. 
Her education had ceased with the fourth grade and the father’s 
with the fifth. There was not a single child’s book in the house, 
but the mother responded at once to the suggestion that she buy 
picture books and try to entice the child to read. The brother, fol¬ 
lowing the teacher’s directions, helped her at home, though he was 
probably not a very skillful teacher. An Otis group test given 
him when he was 15 years old and in the eighth grade rated him 
at 11 years and 4 months mentally, with an intelligence quotient 
of 76. During the year there were indications of an unusually hard 
struggle with poverty. When Vivian’s cloak was stolen it was 
replaced with a shabby and worn old one. The same little striped- 
cotton dress was worn month after month, always neatly washed and 
ironed. 

When Vivian entered the class she knew a few number combina¬ 
tions and a very few words, though not enough to read the simplest 
sentence. 

Vivian, like Giovanni, got her start' in reading with the word cards. 
She was willing, but at the start merely dutiful, not interested. 


CASE REPORTS. 


33 


Her industry and fine help at home resulted in surprising progress. 
Very soon the cards and the sentence building were laid aside; the 
letters had been learned by means of the rote song, and the phonetic 
drill had successfully given her command of the sounds. After six 
months the teacher’s notebook says: u Reading beautifully in the third 
reader. Doing all her work with interest and vim.” Vivian learned 
numbers easily, and was fond of writing the number families on 
the blackboard. Writing poems from memory was also a favorite 
pastime. Toward the end of the year her attitude of dutiful industry 
gave place to one of profound interest, and she worked as Giovanni 
did, for the work’s sake. 

Vivian’s mental test at the end of the year gave her a mental age 
of 8 years and 2 months, and an intelligence quotient of 93, three 
points above her previous test. Not many supplementary tests 
could be given, but in association by opposites, in which she had 
failed completely before, she had a record of 62.5 per cent on an 
easy list, a fairly good record for her age. In oral reading her level 
was that of second grade. Vivian reported that she loved school. 

Vivian was placed in a regular third-grade class in April, 1918, 
and was promoted with the class to fourth grade. Her first year in 
the fourth grade saw several tragedies. She not only lost all the 
time that the school was closed because of the epidemic but her family 
had the “ flu ” during the time that the Schools were in session, 
and she lost that time, too. The teacher thought her incapable of 
fourth-grade work and demoted her to the third, a very discourag¬ 
ing experience, and, in our opinion, scarcely justified. The follow¬ 
ing year she was again sent on to the fourth grade. In January of 
that year (1920) Vivian was given a third mental examination. 
This time her mental age on the Stanford scale was only 8 years 
and 6 months, and her intelligence quotient 81. In a year and a 
half, therefore, since leaving the observation class, Vivian had ad¬ 
vanced only four months mentally. In association by opposites she 
now made a normal record for her years. She proved entirely un¬ 
able to do the Healy picture completion test No. 2. Her foolish 
mistakes so penalized the record that she received no credit, while 
the normal 8-year-old child receives 27 points credit. 

In an Otis group test, given in March, Vivian had a score of only 
25, a mental age of 7 years and 7 months, and an intelligence quo¬ 
tient of 72. 

Her academic tests were excellent so far as mechanics are con¬ 
cerned. Her oral reading was somewhat above fourth-grade aver¬ 
age; in arithmetic she knew all of the methods of addition, 
subtraction, multiplication, and long division, but she was easily 
confused and seemed unable to correct mistakes. Neither could she 
apply arithmetical methods to practical problems. 


34 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


After two years in the fourth grade Vivian was promoted to the 
fifth. She did a fair year’s work in the fifth grade, and was pro¬ 
moted in June, 1921, at the age of 12 years, to the lower division 
of the sixth grade. She had worked very hard, and her teacher felt 
that she had mastered all she could of the work of the fifth grade 
and should be allowed to try the sixth. 

Vivian is, in our judgment, a nice child of limited ability and a 
degree of shyness and lack of self-confidence which is a real handi¬ 
cap. She will probably, with her unfailing industry, finish the ele¬ 
mentary school, and would be capable of taking a trade training 
if she desires, though it is hard to imagine Vivian as taking hold 
of industrial life with vim or pleasure. The most suitable life for 
her seems that of housekeeper and kindly neighbor. She will never 
be a very effective person, but she is lovable and will have a suf¬ 
ficient education to find resources and companionship for herself 
in books. 


CASE REPORTS 


35 




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36 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 5. 

Landon first came in for examination in January, 1917, when he 
was 9 years old and had a mental age of 7 years and 4 months on 
the Stanford revision of the Binet scale. His intelligence quotient 
w T as 81. In the Pintner cube test he had a 10-year record, in the 
picture completion test a 12-year record, and in construction puzzle 
A he had a 10-year record. In substitution his work was accurate, but 
abnormally slow, slower than the average 8-year-old. The comment 
of the examiner was: “ In my judgment, Landon is not feeble¬ 
minded, though a final diagnosis can not yet be made.” After two 
months in the class the teacher wrote of him: “ I should call him an 
average 7-year-old child if I did not know that he is nearly 10.” 
The child was small of stature, young of face, and of imperfect 
speech. He had a very dependent, trustful manner. 

Landon had entered school at 6 years and 9 months, had spent a 
year in the first grade, a year in which he failed in the second grade, 
and was again failing in the second grade when he was sent to us. 

He was undersized, but had no outstanding defects except one of 
speech. He talked baby talk. 

Landon’s father was dead, and the mother supported the family 
by daywork. Her own education had ceased when at the age of 13 
and in the third grade of a Catholic school she had—to use her own 
words—“ just quit.” A pleasant-faced aunt cared for the children 
when the mother was absent at work. The teacher’s account of the 
family is as follows: 

It seems to be a very bumble but ideal home life, in which each member takes 
part in the duties and shares in the pleasures. Self-respecting describes the 
family. I found them doing the washing. Landon and an older boy were 
turning the wringer. Evidently the boy is trained to habits of industry and 
thrift. There are three older children in the family and one younger. It was 
touching to see how promptly Landon found his brothers at recess and at noon. 

The only other member of the family examined in the laboratory 
was an older sister, who, in 1920, applied for an employment certifi¬ 
cate, at the age of 16 years when she had completed only the sixth 
grade. Her mental age on the Stanford revision was 9 years and 5 
months, and her intelligent quotient 59. Her record in a group test, 
given with the national intelligence scale, was even poorer, with a 
mental age of 8 years and 3 months. The certificate was granted, 
since she could not with due industry complete the required grade— 
the seventh. This sister also had a speech defect. 

When Landon entered the class after two and a half years of regu¬ 
lar attendance at school, neither his reading nor his arithmetic was 
of first-grade standard. He knew a few words, but so many of the 
basic ones of the first reader were still lacking that it was impossible 


CASE REPORTS. 


37 


for him to read anything well enough to get the meaning. In number 
work he knew some simple addition, but nothing more. 

Landon’s attitude toward his school work was from the start one 
of ambition and a great desire to succeed, but his motive seemed to 
be, in the words of his teacher, “ just to keep his self-respect and 
please his home folk.” The idea of school work as a thing of interest 
or joy had never come to him. He w r as steeled for unsweetened toil. 

When he first entered the class, Landon was determined to try 
third-grade work. Accordingly he was given a third reader and set 
the task of trying to find the answers to some questions about a pic¬ 
ture by reading the book. The task was utterly impossible, because so 
many words which he should have learned in the first grade were still 
a complete blank to him. The teacher then persuaded him to try a 
second-grade reader, which he had never seen before. By dint of 
having the story read to him first by the teacher he was able by hard 
study to read it for himself. Appeals for help from the teacher were 
always met with some drill on phonics which gave him a gradual 
mastery of more and more words. He was a proud little fellow, in¬ 
deed, when after three months in the class he was able to read a story 
from the second reader to the class. 

One of Landon’s greatest difficulties was in his own inability to 
construct sentences because of his very limited field of experience. 
Birds, beasts, flowers, and insects, even colors, the commonplaces of 
the school readers, were matters that were by no means organized 
parts of Landon’s background of knowledge. The type of lesson 
which helped him most was that described on page 14, in which, 
after discussion of the differences between birds and beasts, the chil¬ 
dren were told that they might tell in writing what kind of creature 
each one in a list was. The words in the list—for instance, horse, 
owl, cow T , dog, robin, mouse, sparrow—were pronounced and spelled 
carefully and then written on the blackboard one under another. 
The two words “ beast ” and “ bird ” were also written in another 
list, and the word “ is ” between. The task was to construct a sen¬ 
tence thus: u The horse is a beast.” “ The owl is a bird.” Later in¬ 
sects, reptiles, and fishes were added in the same manner. The work 
was illustrated by objects, if possible; if not, by colored plates. Color 
words, shape words, and size words were treated in the same way. 
The use of various national flags in teaching color proved to be very 
popular with Landon. The colored plates of the Geographic Maga¬ 
zine were used for this purpose. Simple as these sentences seem, 
when all the preliminary work is thus placed before the child, they 
nevertheless required constant vigilance on the part of Landon to 
go through the process of constructing them, and still see to it that 
his pencil always told the truth. He was gaining not only a back- 


38 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


ground of information but ability to think and a first conception of 
the real use of written and printed language. 

Numbers were also difficult for Landon. Beyond recording ad¬ 
dition facts, he was lost. When asked the cost of two pencils at 
5 cents each, he would invariably say 7 cents. It was necessary to 
go back to the concrete presentation of numbers in terms of objects, 
money, or drawings which he made himself. The beginnings of 
the multiplication table had to be acquired the same way by re¬ 
peated concrete presentation, thus: nil? etc * ^an- 

don was given no rote work in arithmetic until the teacher was sure 
that the process was understood in concrete terms. Drills for speed 
were then made into a merry game. In the second half of the year 
Landon learned to carry by tens in the same concrete way by the 
use of cubes, and the actual construction of numbers in columns of 
10 cubes each and the units separately. No drill in addition in¬ 
volving carrying was given until it was certain that he had grasped 
the idea by repeated construction of the addition of two place 
numbers. 

At the end of one year in the observation class Landon had com¬ 
pleted the work of three grades. A reexamination with the Stanford 
revision showed that his intelligence quotient had risen from 81 
to 88. His supplementary tests—construction puzzle A, substitu¬ 
tion and opposites, were 9-year records and his oral reading was 
of second-grade standard. Miss Ferris’s analysis of the situation was 
that in addition to being naturally slow and finding it difficult to 
retain visual impressions, Landon was shy and sensitive and had 
worried in secret over his failures until the expectation of failure 
dominated his soul. Here is her summing up of the case: 44 Landon 
proves that a dear, conscientious little boy, abnormally slow in 
grasping ideas as well as in retaining visual impressions, by trying 
day after day to follow the work of the grade only to fail miserably 
and to grieve over it in secret, is simply ruining himself. Given 
freedom to choose a large part of his work, to study aloud, to come 
to the teacher for help when he needed it, to read the whole lesson 
aloud to his teacher with no one listening, to do to-morrow, without 
a sense of loss, the thing which had not quite satisfied him to-day, 
he became free from failure and the anxious, worried look gradually 
gave place to an expression of confidence and happiness. Allowing 
him to tutor younger children added to his sense of power. Singing 
alone before the mother’s club helped to dispel the shyness.” 

Landon’s career since his year in the observation class has been 
less successful than we had hoped. He was placed in the fourth 
grade, but failed to pass, possibly because of the enormous loss 
of time during the 44 flu ” epidemic. Although he had always been 


CASE REPORTS. 


39 


a saint” in the observation class, he was reported to be impudent 
and insubordinate with his next teacher. The following year he was 
again in the fourth grade. A. national intelligence group exami¬ 
nation, given in March, 1920, gave him a mental age of only 7 
years and 5 months, and an intelligence quotient of 61. Another 
Stanford test of the same month gave him a mental age of 8 years 
and 6 months, 9 months less than at his test almost two years 
earlier. His intelligence quotient had fallen from 88 to 69. " The 
teacher of that year reported that Landon was good and con¬ 
scientious and tried very hard, but that his academic work was 
not good, considering the fact that he was spending a second year 
in the grade. 

He passed to the lower division of the fifth grade, after his second 
year in the fourth. At the end of his year in the fifth grade he 
was conditioned in arithmetic and was sent to summer school in the 
summer of 1921, with the understanding that if he passed he might 
enter the sixth grade in the fall. He remained three weeks in sum¬ 
mer school, where his work in arithmetic was surprisingly good 
and his language work poor—a reversal of his previous record. 
His work was ended by an attack of grippe and he will be com¬ 
pelled to repeat the fifth grade. 

When Landon’s family was visited in July, 1921, conditions were 
somewhat improved. Two of the older children were working 
and the mother stayed at home. She was not troubled by Landon’s 
school failure. He had already gone further in his studies than 
she had before she “just quit.” No realization of the fact that, but 
for the observation class, Landon would probably never have learned 
to read, had come to her. Indeed she was inclined to resent the 
class as unnecessary for her boy. 

Our opinion of Landon’s prospects in the world is not so favor¬ 
able now as it was when he was in the observation class. It seemed, 
then, from the satisfactory way in which he completed three grades 
in a year, and his fine, ambitious attitude, that he had been merely 
suffering from the cumulative effect of frequent and unnecessary 
failures. Restore his self-confidence and give him a start in funda¬ 
mentals, we thought, and he will be able to keep the pace of the 
elementary school. It is now evident that Landon’s capacities are 
more limited than we thought. His sensitiveness and suggestibility 
doubtless play a part. At the age of 9 he was able to make up the 
failures of ages 6, 7, and 8 in a year under the conditions of the 
observation class, but he is not able to go on at the average pace 
under the conditions of the regular grade. He will probably not 
be able to complete the work of the elementary school. His rate 
of development seems to be slowing down and his ultimate level 
will probably be on the border line of defect. The drop in intelli- 


40 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


gence quotient from 88 to 69 is abnormally great. He may (if lie 
does as well for himself as his conscientious and industrious but 
limited little mother has done for herself) make an excellent semi¬ 
skilled worker. Thanks to the observation class he will have a 
usable knowledge of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. He 
is the type of child who probably would have succeeded far better 
if he could have been retained longer in the observation class. 


Case 


CASE REPORTS. 


41 














































































































42 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 6. 

We first saw Curtis in the spring of 1917 after he had spent a 
year in kindergarten and almost a year in the first grade. He was 6 
years and 7 months old, had a mental age on the Stanford revision 
of the Binet scale of 5 years and 6 months, and an intelligence 
quotient of 84. His performance tests, however, were considerably 
above this level. He had records of 7 and 8 years in construction 
puzzle and picture completion tests, and of 10 years in the Pintner 
cube test. The substitution test he could do, though very slowly. In 
association by opposites he failed to grasp the idea. 

Physically Curtis was suffering from undernourishment, though 
no other type of physical defect was reported by the doctor. The 
child was beautiful in body and face, but pitifully weak. 

Curtis’s family, consisting of mother, father, two older brothers, 
and a baby brother, lived on a ground-floor tenement in a filthy alley. 
Four children had died. Curtis’s father was a weak, good-for- 
nothing man who did not work for the support of the family except 
when his wife, in her language, 44 had him pulled ” and sent to thework- 
hotfse. He had had a fairly good education in Germany. His trade 
was that of varnisher, but he never kept a position long, chiefly be¬ 
cause he was a heavy drinker. In spite of his obvious failure as a 
parent, the children were fond of him. Curtis’s mother was a futile 
little woman, quite incapable of grappling with so difficult a family 
problem. She had never been to school after she was 8 years old, 
because after her mother’s death she was placed out to live with some 
people who did not send her. Before her marriage she had worked 
as a domestic servant. She did cleaning by the day to support the 
children. Some of her hard-earned and sorely needed money was 
spent for drink by the father. So irresponsible was the mother that 
on one occasion when Curtis was very ill with the 44 flu,” she spent 
the entire morning at school, enjoying a visit with his teacher, while 
Curtis was alone in the house. Suggestions that perhaps Curtis 
might need her did not serve to disturb her pleasant visit. She was, 
in Miss Ferris’s words, 44 like a silly little 10-year-old girl.” On an¬ 
other day when Miss Ferris visited the sick boy, she found his mother 
away from home and the brothers caring for him. In spite of the 
school, the Humane Society and the Associated Charities, the children 
were constantly cold, hungry, and neglected. The winter before, 
Curtis had had his feet frozen in his own home. All of the children 
had sad, shy, appealing faces. They were very fond of their mother, 
in spite of her neglect of them. When we first knew them they were 
all very well behaved and were favorites with the teachers at school. 
Both of Curtis’s older brothers have had mental tests. One of them 
was given an Otis group test when he was 12 years old and in the 


CASE REPORTS. 


43 


sixth grade. His intelligence quotient was 99. The other brother was 
examined for the placement office after he had left school. He had 
completed only the seventh grade at 15 years. His intelligence 
quotient on the Stanford scale was 90. 

Curtis was a particularly lovable child, so much so that his teacher 
would have liked to adopt him. He was manly and independent. 
Hunger drove him to eat the morning lunch provided at school, but 
he always insisted on performing some service to pay for it, and 
was allowed to do it in order that his self-respect and independence 
might be maintained. The lack of these qualities in his parents 
seemed to distress him. The first time he was given a bottle of milk 
to take home, he came back with a note which he gave secretly to his 
teacher, his fine little face burning with shame. It was a request 
from the mother that the teacher buy them a bushel of coal. 

In his year in the first grade Curtis had learned to copy neatly 
from script, though he knew no words or letters. He was slow but 
accurate in dealing with numbers below 10. His attendance had been 
irregular. Doubtless irregular attendance, a low state of physical 
vitality, and slowness of mind accounted for his failure. Curtis was 
willing to study, but word impressions faded from his mind in a very 
discouraging way. Comparing word cards with words in known 
verses, building sentences with word cards, and drills in phonics all 
failed. His number work was well done. Meanwhile Curtis was 
frequently kept at home to care for the baby, and since he was not 
yet 8, his parents could not be compelled to send him. It was impos¬ 
sible to secure voluntary cooperation from them. Curtis gave the 
impression of living in a constant state of anxiety. Toward spring 
the baby died, and while it was a great grief to Curtis, the child’s 
death released him from part of his anxiety and made his attendance 
more regular. 

Curtis’s first sign of real progress with reading came toward the 
end of the year. A new group of little failures had been introduced 
in the class to take the places of some of those who had gone on into 
regular grades. The method tried with some of them was that of 
learning to spell words aloud by rote, and then while holding the 
auditory image firmly in mind to fit the sounds to the letters on the 
blackboard. Curtis, who had learned the letters from the rote song, 
could join in and even play teacher. However, though he made some 
progress in this way, Curtis remained sad and listless to the end of 
the year, and aside from number work he accomplished little. 

His second examination, in June, 1918, gave him a mental age 
of 7 years and 10 months and an intelligence quotient of 99, an in¬ 
crease of 15 points. His supplementary tests were also much better. 
In substitution his speed was that of a normal 8-year-old, and the 
30526°—23-1 



44 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


fourth page was perfectly written from memory. In association by 
opposites he grasped the idea and made an accuracy of 47.5 per cent 
on an easy list. He failed in construction puzzle A, but solved B in 
less than normal time. His normal tests make his failure in school 
still more surprising. 

In the summer of 1918 we arranged to have Curtis, his mother, 
and brothers go to the fresh-air farm. They had a glorious time 
and came back tanned and smiling. By November, however, Curtis, 
who was kept in the observation class a second year, was looking 
very frail and delicate again. His mother had secured a divorce 
from her husband in September. In February the mother was very 
ill and was taken to the hospital. Her divorced husband went home 
to care for the children in her absence, but she worried for fear he 
would again sell her furniture for drink. When she got out of the 
hospital she sent the father away. Curtis seemed very much 
grieved and worried about it. 

It was February of the second year before Curtis really began to 
read. Arithmetic seemed easier for him. He was doing second-grade 
arithmetic by the end of the year. 

The following year (September, 1919) Curtis was placed in a 
regular second grade. He was given his third examination in Janu¬ 
ary, 1920, when he was 9 years and 6 months old. His mental age 
was 8 years and 9 months, and his intelligence quotient 92. In the 
Healy picture completion test No. 2 he had a record of 9f years. 
His academic tests showed second-grade attainment in arithmetic 
and spelling and first grade in reading. His teacher reported that 
he was an excellent pupil and was doing very good work. His 
behavior was perfect. 

Curtis still seemed undernourished, and his second-grade teacher 
followed Miss Ferris’s custom of bringing him a sandwich every 
day. Frequently, instead of eating it, Curtis took it home to his 
mother. Without seeming at all abashed the mother told his teacher, 
“ Oh, yes; Curtis often brings the sandwich home to me, and when 
he carries packages for ladies and they give him something to eat he 
always brings it to me.” Curtis and his brothers had been very 
much distressed at having the father sent away, particularly while 
the mother was entertaining another man. She had hesitated for a 
time, uncertain whether to remarry her divorced husband or to marry 
her new suitor, but in spite of the pleadings of the boys for their own 
father she married the other man. He did not come home drunk 
and was unwilling to allow her to work, but events showed that so 
far as the boys were concerned she had made a bad choice. 

Curtis was promoted to the third grade, but he did not pass the 
grade. For the first time in his life he had begun to be unruly and 


CASE REPORTS. 


45 


to make trouble at school—he played truant and he told lies. An 
older brother, who had gone to work, also gave concern to the school 
authorities because he refused to attend continuation school. In¬ 
quiry revealed the fact that the stepfather was having trouble with 
the boys, who resented his presence, and at times left home to stay 
with their own father. 

In July of 1921 Miss Ferris visited the tenement-house home of 
two roonls and here is the story the mother told: 

Walter carries packages after school and earns $2.50 a week, but Edward 
won’t go to school and he won’t work. He got lots of jobs but he wouldn’t 
stick, so we just threw him out and made him go back to his father. He 
idled and stayed away from continuation school till they got him into juvenile 
court, in the detention home. I couldn’t stand that, so I went and brought 
him home. His father started in coming to see me about two weeks after I 
was married to this man—a begging me to divorce my man and marry him 
again. It’s just jealousness. He and my man scrap something awful. Now 
he’s married again, but he still comes and his wife comes. I’ve notified the 
police and if they come again there’ll be trouble. 

With all this the woman was not in the least depressed. It all 
seemed very entertaining to her and there was a marked trace of 
coquetry in her manner w r hen speaking of her two husbands. Ed¬ 
ward, 16 years old, unemployed, has tragedy in his face. Curtis 
has lost his sweet, trustful expression. The one virtue of the home, 
affection and respect between children and parents, is gone, and the 
chance for the boys to make good citizens is immeasurably less. 
It is difficult to be sure of the interpretation of Curtis’s results. 
According to all the tests, his ability is normal—better than that of 
most of the members of the class. However, in spite of great sym¬ 
pathy, real affection, and effort on the part of the teacher, Curtis’s 
progress has been much less than the expectation. Our opinion is 
that Curtis is sufficiently sensitive and fixed in his affections to have 
been very deeply disturbed by the trouble between his parents at 
home, and that as a result he has never been able to keep his mind 
fully concentrated on his school work. With the continued friction 
between the stepfather and the boys, Curtis may never make the 
most of his powers. He leaves upon us a sad impression of good 
ability unused and a fine nature being perverted by false relation¬ 
ships in the home. 


Case 


46 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES, 


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CASE REPORTS. 


47 


CASE 7. 

Harvey we first saw at tlie age of 7 years and 8 months (February, 
1917). Harvey had spent 2 years in the first grade, but his attend¬ 
ance had been so irregular that he was out fully half of the time. 
He was a complete academic failure. 

On the Stanford revision of the Binet scale Harvey had a mental 
age of 6 years and 10 months and an intelligence quotient of 89. 
He failed in construction puzzle A after being very much bored 
with it for 5 minutes, but could do it in 25 seconds after being shown 
how. In construction puzzle B he had an excellent record—as good 
as a 12-year-old. The substitution test was performed with such 
excessive slowness that it had to be discontinued—the first page took 
13 minutes. It was exceedingly difficult to hold him to the task at 
all. The picture-completion test was a very poor record—6 points. 
Pie seemed indifferent toward it and filled most of the spaces with 
blanks. Throughout the test his indifference to everything and the 
great difficulty in concentrating attention were evident. 

Harvey was a frail little fellow, with a slender body and pale 
eyes. The doctor reported a fair physical condition, but considered 
the child neurotic. His tonsils were very badly enlarged, but the 
mother refused to have them removed. She had recently lost a 
younger child and seemed afraid of losing Harvey. The child’s own 
father was dead and his mother had married again. The home was 
a few neat rooms in a tenement house. His mother was young and 
made a good impression. Both she and the stepfather, who was 
a motorman, were very much interested in Harvey’s school work 
and ready to cooperate with the school. There were no other living 
children. Harvey’s stepfather drank at times and was very unrea¬ 
sonable when drunk. 

When Harvey entered the class he knew neither word, letter, nor 
number. Indeed, he had never sensed what letters, words, or num¬ 
bers are. He could not even do mechanical copying of script, as so 
many of the others could. It seemed impossible for him to make 
himself work at even so simple a task as copying number dots. The 
moment he was left to himself he would begin weaving about in his 
seat, apparently thinking of nothing. When spoken to he would 
start, snatch his pencil, smile apologetically, and work fast for about 
half a minute, and then lapse into idleness. He did not give at all 
the impression of being unwilling. It was pure inability to con¬ 
centrate. The child produced the impression of being defective, and 
he was one of the few w T ho was definitely unattractive. Teachers 
and pupils for the most part disliked him. He had no reserves and 
no fineness of feeling. His behavior was often exceedingly infantile. 
During his second year in the class he had charge of the supply 


48 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


cupboard, and took pride in keeping it orderly. On one occasion 
while he was absent another child put some paper away in the 
wrong place. When Harvey returned and saw his order disturbed, 
instead of restoring it, as he so easily might, he stood and cried about 
it like a 5-year-old. 

The infantile character of his thinking is illustrated by his pro¬ 
cedure when he was told to count the pickets on the fence between 
posts, write down the number in each division, and then add them 
up to get the total number of pickets. He counted the pickets in 
each section of the fence, but instead of writing the numbers one 
under another and adding them he wrote them side by side—after 
the analogy of the pickets—and then tried to read off the resulting 
number. 

Harvey seemed to be suffering from fears and repressions. For 
the first year and a half in the observation class he was painfully 
good. He seemed to be alarmed whenever the other children did any¬ 
thing wrong, and was always correcting them and wanting to tell 
tales on them. One day in the class the subject of right doing came 
up, and Harvey said: “You must never do anything wrong, for if 
you do you’ll die that night.” Miss Ferris told him that was not 
true and tried to supply better motives, but Harvey, in the wonder¬ 
ful relief from fear, let loose his long-repressed “wishes” and 
became all boy, and a bad boy at that, for several weeks. It would 
be interesting to know what part, that fear had played in his peculiar 
make-up. 

Harvey had a good memory for stories. He could take a Story 
Hour reader and apparently read the story with great pleasure. A 
glance over his shoulder showed that he was repeating content, not 
reading. He could neither name words that were pointed out nor 
find any given word himself. The word cards constituted his ap¬ 
proach to reading. It took a long time and countless repetitions for 
him to master any word images. Letters and sounds he slowly 
learned from the rote song and the phonic cards. After two months 
the teacher’s note says: “ Harvey, after meeting the word 4 make ’ 
many times this year, did not know it to-day. He sounded it out care¬ 
fully 4 m-a-k-e—boy.’ ” In another attempt he said 44 m-a-k-e, bread,” 
which may have been an association by contiguity from the sentence 
where he first tried to learn the word: “Who will help me make 
bread? ” Finally the contrast between his paper with almost noth¬ 
ing on it and the well-written lessons of some of the rest of the group 
seemed to spur him on a bit. He was given the paper of one of the 
other children to take home and copy. The case seemed almost hope¬ 
less till near the end of the year. The continual presence of a 
stronger will seemed necessary to overcome his inertia. 


CASE REPORTS. 


49 


The device which finally succeeded in giving him a stock of words 
was that of memorizing a poem. It happened to be the one from 
Baldwin’s second reader, beginning “ Stop, stop, pretty water, said 
Mary one day.” The words of the first stanza were studied carefully 
and printed by the teacher on the blackboard in columns, the shortest 
ones in the first column, the next longest ones in the second column, 
etc. There were five columns. The grouping by length was merely to 
facilitate finding the words. The child, with pointer in hand, then 
recited the stanza, pointing to each word as he said it. The process 
was very slow at first and the possibility of making ludicrous mis¬ 
takes gave it the interest of an amusing game for the little group of 
four w r ho watched. They became very eager to bring the rate of 
word-finding up to the correct' speed for reciting the stanza. The 
competition helped Harvey to sharpen his wits. Miss Ferris called 
it the word-fitting game, and not only Harvey but the other children 
loved it. The other stanzas of the poems were treated in the same 
way. 

About the 1st of April the teacher’s notes say of Harvey: “ Work¬ 
ing bravely and seeming to retain for good those baffling words such 
as would, could, and where.” At the end of May the entry is: 
“ Reading with interest in the second reader.” 

W T hen retested in June, Harvey’s intelligence quotient had risen 
from 89 to 92. The substitution test, which had to be given up 
because of abnormal slowness before, was performed with a normal 
8-year record. Opposites, given orally with the easy list, gave an 
accuracy of 67.5 per cent—a record about normal for his age. Instead 
of 6 points credit in picture completion, he now had 12 points. He 
succeeded in solving construction puzzles A and B, the five-figure 
form board, and the two-figure board. He failed on the casuist board. 
The improvement in his test records was consistent and significant. 
He was retained in the observation class a second year in the hope 
that he could accomplish two years’ work—a hope which was not ful¬ 
filled, perhaps because of the loss of time during the epidemic. He 
was placed in a regular third grade in September, 1919. 

In January of 1920, while in the third grade, Harvey was given his 
third mental examination. This time his mental age was 9 years and 
4 months and his intelligence quotient 87. No supplementary tests 
were given except educational ones. His reading was of fourth-grade 
level and his spelling and arithmetic third grade. His tonsils had 
not been removed, in spite of the mother’s promises, and were still 
badly infected. 

Harvey was in the fourth grade the following year, at the age of 
11 years, but failed to pass. He had grown very tall and thin, and 
still wore his foolish smile. 


50 


TREATMENT OF XOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


In August, 1921, after his year in the fourth grade, Harvey was 
given his fourth mental test. Pie was 12 years and 2 months old. 
had a mental age of 10 years and 2 months, and an intelligence quo¬ 
tient of 83—four points less than his previous test and nine points 
less than the test made while he was in the observation class. Pie was 
still characterized by listlessness and indifference throughout the test. 
His constant foolish smile still caught the attention of even a casual 
observer. His spelling and arithmetic were below a fourth-grade 
level. Some of the sequences of association in the 10-year association 
test suggested strongly the presence of an unwholesome interest in 
matters of sex and probable bad sex practices. Harvey’s school fail¬ 
ure, in spite of all efforts, has always been worse than his mental 
limitations necessitate. Our judgment of him is that his mind is, 
and has been since we have known him, occupied with secret and 
illicit thoughts and fears, and has never been given to his school 
work. 

Harvey has sufficient ability to make a modest success in the world. 
Whether or not he does so will depend upon whether he ever con¬ 
quers his obsessions and learns to attack his tasks with an undivided 
interest. As yet the laboratory has not a sufficient number of workers 
to undertake the treatment of cases as time-consuming as those of 
this type. 


Case 7. 


CASE REPORTS. 


51 


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52 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 8. 

Giovanni when we first saw him was almost 8 years old and was 
failing badly in the first grade. He had apparently made no be¬ 
ginning in grasping school work. He was unable to read, write, or 
record number facts, and knew neither written nor printed letters 
nor their sounds. His first test gave him a mental age of 6 years 
and 4 months and an intelligence quotient of 81. He failed in con¬ 
struction puzzler A and B and in opposites, and had less than a 
5-year record in the Pintner cube test. The substitution test he 
performed with complete accuracy, though somewhat slowly for his 
years. The examiner said, “ May be a high-grade defective.” 

Giovanni’s physical condition showed the presence of tonsils and 
adenoids, which the mother refused to have removed. He was fre¬ 
quently underfed and never well cared for physically. 

For a long time we knew Giovanni’s family only through him. 
There was never anyone at home. Gradually we learned the follow¬ 
ing history: Giovanni’s mother, an Irish woman, before her mar¬ 
riage had been a domestic servant of unusually high type. She was 
competent about her work, well dressed, and impressed her employ¬ 
ers as a person of unusual culture and refinement. She married an 
Italian of good family, who was evidently the “black sheep.” His 
brutality and neglect gradually demoralized the mother, who had 
real affection for him, and she began to drink. Eventually the father 
deserted the family, leaving the mother, her blind insane brother, 
to whom she was devoted, and Giovanni without support. The 
mother went out to work by the day, and little Giovanni in the cru¬ 
cial years from 2 to 6 spent much of his time locked in the rooms 
with a blind and supposedly harmless lunatic. The mother was a 
good worker when she was sober, but was frequently overcome by 
drink. At one time Giovanni was taken away and placed in a chil¬ 
dren’s home. The fear of a repetition of this experience haunted 
both Giovanni and his mother. 

Never was child more loyal and devoted to his family than little 
neglected Giovanni. Some of the fine qualities apparent in both 
of his parents, in spite of their terrible failures, were his. The one 
really beautiful thing in his life was the love existing between him 
and his mother. Evidently the mother had even tried to idealize the 
father for him, because this is the tale Giovanni told about him with 
every air of conviction: 

My father has $30,000 he is saving for me. Oh, no; he doesn’t send us any 
money now. He knows I’ll need it more when I am 21. He has gone to fight 
for our country. 

Meanwhile, we were told, the mother had refused out of pride to 
receive any help from her husband’s family. 


CASE REPORTS. 


53 


On one of the coldest days Giovanni showed such nervous irrita¬ 
bility and looked so exhausted that his teacher asked him suddenly, 
U What did you eat at noon, Giovanni ? ” His wan little face broke 
into a game smile as he answered, 44 Oh, we don’t have dinner these 
days, Miss Ferris; my mother takes my blind uncle out to play the 
violin somewhere, and they don’t come back till 8 o’clock at night.” 
u But doesn’t she leave a lunch on the table for you? ” asked the 
teacher. 44 Why, no,” protested Giovanni loyally, 44 she can’t, Miss 
Ferris. There’s no money! ” On this occasion he was given some 
money and told to get something to eat before going home after 
school. The next day he came with a tale of the grand supper and 
breakfast he had, and said that his mother had left 44 rice and meat 
and everything ” for his lunch that day. But the teacher was not 
deceived. The fear of the 44 home ” was upon them all, and while it 
may have been possible to give him food for a day or so it certainly 
was not the established regime. Either this fear or some other great 
anxiety seemed to be always upon the child. He would suddenly 
burst into tears with no apparent cause and would refuse to confide 
his trouble. 

Later Giovanni’s new shoes, given him by the school attendance 
department, suddenly disappeared and he had half a dozen dif¬ 
ferent stories to account for wearing a pair of old gymnasium shoes, 
sizes too large for him. The mother, meanwhile, applied to the 
Associated Charities for more shoes and when their representative* 
called at the school to investigate, Giovanni’s irreconcilable stories 
would have been laughable but for the pity of it all. He couldn’t! 
wear the new shoes, he said, because they were full of tacks. He 
was told to bring them to school and the janitor would make them 
smooth. 44 But a kid came upstairs and stole them,” he protested 
immediately, and, when he saw that this story was doubted, he told 
one story after another until the truth was evident. His mother 
had sold the shoes for drink. Up to this time it had been impossible 
for any of us to find the mother. Even when we had every reason 
to believe she was at home, she eluded us. We were thinking strongly 
that the poor, cold, hungry, dirty little fellow should be rescued, 
but the visitor from the Associated Charities succeeded finally in 
finding the mother, and because of her native refinement and in¬ 
telligence, and of Giovanni’s intense devotion to her, it was decided 
to leave him with her for a time at least and give him help from 

outside. Mrs. W-, who had known the mother in her better 

days, sent word to the teacher to give him a good lunch every 
day at the school and send her the bill. He received it gratefully 
for several days, but the mother became alarmed again and for¬ 
bade it. 



54 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


Our home visitor made every effort to send Giovanni to a camp 
in the summer. The mother of one of the other observation class 
children, who was going, was willing and anxious to take Giovanni 
with her children and be responsible for him. Giovanni first said 
he would go, and then refused; and finally, at the last moment, 
when he was found on the street, locked out of his home and with 
no knowledge of where his mother was, he broke down and cried and 
told the visitor he did not dare go for fear he would not be able to 
find his mother when he got back. 

In spite of Giovanni’s apparently limited ability and the terrible 
distractions and limitations of his home life, he took hold of the 
school work with surprising avidity. After two months in the class, 
the teacher notes: “His attitude toward the work is that of an 
intensely interested college student. He seems hungry for everything 
and has made very rapid progress. He now reads fairly well and 
does his lessons with what looks very much like real work for the 
work’s sake.” The methods which seemed to help Giovanni most 
were studying aloud, so that the triple impressions of eye, ear, and 
motor speech became coordinated, and the privilege of coming to ask 
for help just when he needed it. His start in reading he obtained by 
comparing word cards with a little verse which he had memorized 
and which was printed on the blackboard. This compelled him to 
observe both resemblances and differences, while keeping firmly in 
mind the content of the verse. The mastery of the phonic elements 
of words and the muscular coordination of writing came much later. 
His first trouble seemed to be in a recognition of the forms them¬ 
selves. Building with colored anchor blocks after a pattern seemed 
to help his discrimination of forms. Numbers were far easier for 
Giovanni than reading. He needed less elemental drill in mastering 
them. At times, in spite of his fine application, Giovanni displayed 
a scatter-brained quality in his thinking which made the teacher 
wonder whether it might be the result of his long association with 
his insane uncle. 

At the end of a year iff the observation class Giovanni was reex¬ 
amined. This time his mental age was 7 years and 10 months, and 
his intelligence quotient 86, a gain of five points. Instead of failing 
on the construction puzzles, he made 8-year records in both A and B. 
He got the idea of association by opposites this time, though his 
accuracy on an easy list was only 32.5 per cent. His reading and 
arithmetic were not tested, but the class report was that they were 
of third-grade rank. 

Giovanni entered a regular third grade the following fall. His 
home conditions were somewhat better because his insane uncle had 
been removed the previous spring to an insane asylum. His year 


CASE REPORTS. 


55 


in the third grade, however, was very much broken up by the epi¬ 
demic, the illness of his teacher, and his own transfer to another 
school in May, 1919, and he failed to pass. His mother had taken a 
position as cook in a good children’s institution and Giovanni lived 
in the institution and attended the neighboring school. Giovanni 
has had good care and good food since his mother took this position. 

During his second year in the third grade in January, 1920, 
Giovanni was examined for the third time. His mental age was 8 
years and 2 months, and his intelligence quotient 76. No supple¬ 
mentary tests were given except educational ones. Giovanni’s read¬ 
ing was still only third grade, his arithmetic second grade, and his 
spelling second grade. In the year and a half since leaving the obser¬ 
vation class and notwithstanding his improved home conditions 
Giovanni had gained little if anything in school work. His teacher 
reported that he was very willing and conscientious. 

On this occasion Giovanni told the examiner that his father had 
been gassed in the war and was in an Army hospital. He seemed 
very proud of the fact. 

Giovanni spent the following year in the fourth grade. In June, 
1921, he was examined for the fourth time at the age of 12 years 1 
month. His mental age was 9 years and 6 months, and his intelli¬ 
gence quotient 79. In graded opposites he also had a 9^-year record. 
He failed to understand the directions for the Trabue completion 
test, though the instructions were given as explicitly as usual, and 
put two words in each blank. In academic tests Giovanni met a 
fourth-grade standard in oral reading, but scored below third grade 
in both rate and comprehension of silent reading. His routine 
processes of arithmetic were of fourth-grade rank, and his spelling 
about third grade. His teacher reported that he would be promoted 
to the lowest division of the fifth grade the following year. 

Giovanni was last seen in July of 1921. His mother was still 
employed as cook in the same children’s institution and had com¬ 
pletely overcome her tendency to drink. The superintendent was 
very fond of her personally, and she in turn was devoted to the 
superintendent. Her work was excellent. 

Giovanni’s father, who was at the beginning of the war a reserve 
officer in the Italian Army, took out naturalization papers and 
entered the Army of the United States. He went to France with 
the troops and was gassed. At the time of our interview he was in 
a sanitarium near the city and Giovanni’s mother was spending every 
cent she could on his care. Giovanni was exceedingly proud of his 
soldier father, and his affection for both his parents was intense. 
The blind and insane uncle had died. 

Giovanni’s mother was inclined to be foolishly indulgent to him, 
but his lack of progress in school we were forced to conclude was 


56 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


primarily due to his very limited ability. His conscientiousness 
about his school work was as great as ever, though in the u home ” he 
was lazy and would bribe other boys to do the small bits of work 
which the superintendent assigned as part of his training. 

The future which we foresee for Giovanni is not brilliant and is 
enigmatic. If his habits of conscientious work continue, he may 
make a successful semiskilled worker. It is doubtful if he will be 
able to complete elementary school. If he finishes the sixth grade, 
he will be doing well. Much, we think, will depend on the people 
with whom he is thrown. Giovanni’s capacity for personal devotion 
is great. If his devotion is fixed upon worthy objects, it will become 
a real safeguard to his limited intelligence, but if he finds himself 
betrayed and cruelly disappointed he might become desperate and do 
terrible deeds. 


Case 8. 


CASE REPORTS. 


57 


Opposites. 

Grade. 

Failure. 

Poor. 

Per 

cent. 

5 

32.5 



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Age 

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Acc. 

100 




Picture com¬ 
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Age 

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Score. 

1 

1 

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58 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 9. 

We first saw Ethel at the age of 9 years and 6 months. She was 
at that time in the third grade at school, and had learned to read 
very nicely. Her difficulty was with numbers, of which she knew 
little or nothing. When examined, she had on the Stanford scale a 
mental age of 7 years and 2 months and an intelligence quotient 
of 75. Her supplementary tests were also very poor. In construc¬ 
tion puzzle A she failed. In B she succeeded with an 8-year record. 
Her Pintner cube test was only a 6-year record. The substitution 
test was slower than that of the average 8-year-old and inaccurate 
on the learning page. In a list of easy opposites given orally she had 
a score of 62.5 per cent, which is rather poor for her age. In picture 
completion her score was as good as that of the average child of 12 
years. 

Ethel was a pretty, frail-looking child. She had badly enlarged 
tonsils and at times became very white and faint. When she seemed 
ill in school the teachers wished to send her home, but Ethel cried 
and said her mother had forbidden her to come home during school 
hours. The home was a comfortable apartment over a store. Ethel’s 
mother, a young woman of charming appearance, had a history of 
questionable and irregular behavior. Her education had been lim¬ 
ited by the fourth grade. Ethel’s father was a bartender when we 
first knew her and after prohibition a meat cutter. There was but one 
other child in the family—an older sister with an excessively ro¬ 
mantic name who was a deaf mute. This sister had attended the oral 
school for four years and had learned to speak. She did very good 
work in the first and second grades, but w^as not so good afterwards. 

Ethel’s older sister had already been in trouble and had been 
placed in a school for the deaf. The mother had been held to blame 
for her difficulty. 

Just what experiences Ethel may have been through or how much 
knowledge she had of the real events in which her family was in¬ 
volved it is hard to say, but certain it is that she had far more 
knowledge of irregular social relationships than was at all desirable 
for a child of her age. Both she and her sister were known to use 
vile language, and Ethel was guilty of vulgar writing in the base¬ 
ment. They were both regarded as precocious in matters of sex. 

Ethel was a difficult child to estimate. She had an obvious love 
for romance and thrills and a dramatic instinct for making an im- 
presssion, which made it difficult to know how much of her some¬ 
what wild tales to believe. She told in detail of having been playing 
with a little girl who was taken off by some men and murdered, and 
of how she afterwards helped the police to find the body. The event 
really happened in her neighborhood, but whether she had really par¬ 
ticipated in it or merely appropriated it to make herself interesting we 


CASE REPORTS. 59 

could not be quite sure. Her mother denied that she was involved in 
it, but we were inclined to believe the child. Later in her school ca¬ 
reer, Ethel herself was just being dragged into an alley by some men 
when her father happened along and rescued her. She seems to have 
been the kind of a child to whom things happen. She had the man¬ 
ner of a chorus girl, and there was a secretiveness about her and a 
hardness of expression which bred distrust. The child had a beau¬ 
tiful voice which she was anxious to cultivate and use. She told of 
singing at night in movies, but could never be pinned down to defi¬ 
nite times and places. Though the mother denied the tale, we were 
inclined to think she did so only because she knew she was breaking 
the child labor law and feared we might stop it. Other children 
confirmed the story. 

Ethel could read excellently in the thira reaaer when she entered 
the class, but soon exchanged it for a fourth. She was so dramatic 
in her reading that the children loved to hear her. She also copied 
poems, learned them by heart, and wrote them from memory. She 
was always cheerful and helpful in tutoring the other children. 
Arithmetic, however, seemed to arouse only resistance on her part— 
no real effort. It seemed impossible for her to take the trouble to 
get accurate results. The concrete oral work was completely beyond 
her. She would add the price and the quantity instead of multiply¬ 
ing them. By dint of buying objects and constructing number fami¬ 
lies she at length came to a dim realization of numbers, but her 
vague, romantic, picture-show consciousness was opposed to the pre¬ 
cision of numbers. 

When retested at the end of the year Ethel had an intelligence 
quotient of 81, an increase of 6 points. Her supplementary tests 
were also somewhat better. Substitution was better done, though 
not up to her age standard. The practice pages were still as slow 
as an 8-year-old and showed no improvement from page to page. 
The learning page was only 80 per cent correct. The Pintner cube 
test was the same as the previous year, 6 years. In the opposites test 
she had previously made a record of 62.5 per cent when the test was 
given orally. This time she was able to write the opposites herself, 
but she lost the idea when she had completed a little over half the 
page, and her record was only 50 per cent correct. Her academic 
tests gave her a fourth-grade rank in reading, but not more than 
second grade in arithmetic. Her difficulty with numbers was obvious 
and she worked very slowly. 

Not only her intelligence quotient and her academic work but her 
manners also improved noticeably during the year. 

Ethel was placed in the fourth grade the following year and passed 
it in spite of her poor record in arithmetic and in spite of the broken 
30526°—23-5 


60 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

i 

year. Her school principal felt that her failure in arithmetic was 
due to a specialized defect and that she should not be held back be¬ 
cause of it. During her year in the fifth grade (1919-20) she had 
a third individual examination, given in January. Her mental age 
on the Stanford revision proved to be 9 years and 7 months, and her 
intelligence quotient 77. In graded opposites she had an 11-year 
record, in the Trabue sentence completion test a seventh-grade record, 
and in the Healy picture completion test No. 2 a superior adult record. 

Her academic tests were of fifth-grade level in oral reading and in 
spelling, but in arithmetic she was barely able to pass a third-grade 
test. 

An Otis group test, given in March of the same year (1920), gave 
Ethel a score of 42 and an intelligence quotient of 71. She was 
promoted to the sixth grade at the end of the year, but failed in 
arithmetic and English. She started to make up these subjects in 
summer school, but after seven days’ attendance gave it up. Later she 
told Miss Ferris a characteristic lie about having given up summer 
school because the teachers told her her heart was too weak to stand the 
strain. The degree of her failure in arithmetic is illustrated by the 
fact that she was totally unable to tell Miss Ferris how much money 
she would have left in the bank if she put in $1,000 and then drew 
out $500, or how many books she could buy for $24 at $3 apiece. We 
hope she was not romancing when, during the course of this visit, she 
assured Miss Ferris that she had never liked school until she went to 
the observation class, but that she had liked it ever since. Ethel is 
being advised to go next year to the sewing trades school, where she 
can learn sewing and housework. She will probably leave school and 
try the stage as soon as she is old enough. Her career of singing at 
night in shows still persists, according to her own statement. She is 
under age for such employment and none of the managers would 
admit employing her. 

In our judgment Ethel has been somewhat overestimated by the 
school because of her excellent reading, her facility with language, 
and her dramatic manners. We are inclined to class her in mental 
level as a border-line case of mental defect, granting that she has 
some special abilities not usually found united with her very limited 
general ability. If the school continues to disregard her failure in 
arithmetic, she may complete (?) eighth grade. She is the stuff that 
the traditional chorus girl is made of. Her really good voice and her 
interests and instincts all point to the possibility of a limited success 
on the light opera or vaudeville stage. There is no reason to expect 
conventional morality from Ethel. Only some very lucky accident 
of personal relationship with people of fine ideals who gain an as¬ 
cendency over her would be likely to keep her within the traditional 
limits of social morals. 


Case 9. 


CASE REPORTS. 


61 


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62 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


DEFECTIVE CHILDREN. 

CASE 10. 

Wade was first examined at the age of 7 years and 6 months, in 
the fall of 1917. He had a mental age of 6 years and an intelligence 
quotient of 81. His tests were very scattered and irregular. Ex¬ 
cept for the Pintner cube test, which was normal, his supplementary 
tests were much below the level of the Stanford record. Construc¬ 
tion puzzle A he could not accomplish even after he was shown how. 
His interest could be held for only a moment. Wade had spent a 
year in kindergarten and two in the first grade and had failed even 
to learn to write. 

Wade was a rosy little fellow with no physical defects, although 
his teacher felt that his long, outstanding ears and the peculiar con¬ 
tour of his head were to be regarded as stigmata of feeble-mindedness. 
The child had a slight stammer. His expression was happy and his 
voice shrill. 

Wade had a fairly good home, though it w T as in a wretched build¬ 
ing and a crowded neighborhood. His father was a baker and his 
mother a neat, careful German housewife. She was often brutal in 
her discipline of the children—as when she hit Wade a vicious blow 
over the head in the presence of the teacher because he was not 
learning his lessons. We could never learn of the presence of 
nervous or mental disease in the family. Wade was the eldest of 
four children. He made himself useful at home, helped to care 
for the horses which drew the bakery wagon, and sold papers. He 
seemed able to make change in this occupation. His parents were 
interested in his school progress and had been helping him at home. 
At the teacher’s request they bought him a set of dominoes to help his 
arithmetic. However, the first visit to the home confirmed the 
reputation Wade had for incorrigibility. He defied his mother sev¬ 
eral times during Miss Ferris’s visit. 

When Wade entered the class he had not made a beginning at 
reading, writing, or spelling. He could make some of the num¬ 
bers but could not even count to 10. Wade proved to be a very 
disturbing element in the class. He would follow the teacher about 
the room, stammering out all manner of requests in his shrill voice. 
When he failed to get all he wanted he would storm and cry and 
kick and threaten to go back to his other class. Every effort was 
made to interest him, but, beyond listening attentively to stories, 
there was little he could do. He made a slight beginning in writing 
and after three months in the class he began to learn the letters 
from the little rote song and to build words with letter cards. He 
learned at home to count from the dominoes and to recognize num- 


CASE REPORTS. 


63 


bers up to 12. The child showed so little response to the teaching 
and was so disturbing an element in the class that he was recom¬ 
mended for a reexamination. 

On the second examination his mental age was less than on the 
first one, 5 years and < months, as against 6 years on the first test. 
His intelligence quotient had fallen from 81 to 72. He told a long 
tale about four older brothers and sisters, which his mother assured 
us was a fabrication. He had been telling the same tale at home, 
and his parents had in vain assured him that his younger brothers 
and sisters were the only ones he had. Wade was so evidently de¬ 
fective that he was transferred to the school for defectives, where 
he still is. 

Our next contact with Wade was in the summer of 1921, when 
Miss Ferris visited his home. It was, as before, a neat, well-cared- 
for tenement of three rooms. This time it was on a hillside, airy 
and pleasant, with a view over the city. Wade’s mother’s report of 
him was more roseate than the teacher’s. She said that he read 
the paper every morning, and that he was employed by a neighbor¬ 
ing druggist to deliver packages, an occupation in which he was 
deeply interested. Wade himself, when discovered in his bathing 
suit at the playground pool, looked brown and healthy and happy. 
The druggist who had been his employer reported that he had tried 
the child for two weeks, but that', “though honest as the day is 
long,” he was totally unreliable. He would lay a package down 
wherever he happened to be when he encountered the other boys, and 
play with them all afternoon, utterly oblivious of the package. 

Wade’s teacher said that he seemed to be deteriorating, and learned 
nothing in school. She scorned the idea that he could read the 
paper. Furthermore, she said he was notoriously troublesome in 
school. Even the teachers who did not know him personally knew 
his reputation as one of the incorrigible boys of the school for 
defectives. The manual-training teacher reported that Wade was 
a bad failure in manual work. He would not try to do anything, 
and had been caught several times stealing materials. Perhaps his 
employer had been too lenient in interpreting his behavior with 
packages. 

Wade is unquestionably a defective child, and, in our judgment, 
one of the type of defectives who is almost sure to make trouble for 
society later on. He should be placed in an institution where he 
might be made useful under strict supervision. It is possible, though 
not probable, that institutional training might make him safe for 
life in the community later on. 


Case 10. 


64 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


Opposites. 

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Failure. 

Per 

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norm. 




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Acc. 




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test. 

10-22-1917 

2-20-1918 

Number of 
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1st. 

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CASE REPORTS. 


65 


CASE 11. 

Luella was first examined in the spring of 1917, at the age of 9 
years and 8 months. She had a mental age of 8 years and 4 months 
and an intelligence quotient of 86. On the performance tests her 
records were higher. She had at least 12-year records on construc¬ 
tion puzzle A, picture completion and substitution, and 10-year 
records on construction puzzle B and the Pintner cube test. In asso¬ 
ciation by opposites she was no better than a 6-year-old; her accu¬ 
racy on an easy list, given orally, was 55 per cent. Luella had spent 
three years in the first grade and part of one in the second under 
capable teachers, but was unable to recognize word or letter. 

Luella’s general health was fair, though she was somewhat anemic 
and undernourished, and her teeth were in bad condition. She had 
but one outstanding physical defect, a deformed left hand, which was 
the result of an accident in infancy. She was a perfectly normal in¬ 
fant, according to her mother, who walked at 14 months and talked 
at 17 months. At the age of 19 months she had attempted to follow 
an older brother across an interurban track. She climbed up the em¬ 
bankment and had grasped the track with her left hand when a car 
came along and severed the fingers of her hand. Although Luella 
had at this time made a fair start in talking, she did not try to speak 
again for a year. The physician in attendance attributed this to 
nervous shock. The child is still very nervous and sensitive about 
her defect. We have been unable to discover any history of nervous 
or mental disease in the family. 

Luella’s father was dead. He had been, according to the mother’s 
statements, a man of high-school education and a good man with no 
bad habits. His occupation had been that of traveling salesman. 
Her mother was a woman of poor education but good intentions. 
She had left school at 13 years, after the completion of the fifth 
grade, because she could not buy the books to go on. Before her 
marriage she had been a domestic servant. Her first husband, father 
of Luella’s half-brother, she divorced because he drank and was 
abusive. Luella was the child of her second marriage. While the 
child was in the observation class her mother married for the third 
time. 

Luella’s home was a comfortable place. She was kept clean and 
helped with her lessons. Her mother worked away from home, and 
Luella was left too much to her own devices out of school hours. 
She had been petted and spoiled by her mother and her half-brother 
and was somewhat hard to manage. 

Luella’s four years in school, supplemented by help at home, had 
left her without a beginning of ability to read. She could, however, 
copy script and copy the printed page perfectly. Her handwriting 


66 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


was good. She could memorize in purely visual terms a column 
of 10 words and write them accurately from memory, without being 
able to identify a single word by itself. All she could do was to 
reproduce the entire column in its order. She did this even when 
the words were dictated to her in a different order. She could 
also memorize poems and stories. Her number work was much 
better. She had learned the number s}^mbols, and could do all the 
arithmetic of the second grade which did not involve the use of 
written or printed words. She did not even seem to know that she 
had not gotten the point about reading and writing. For instance, 
she asked her teacher how to spell the name of one of the teachers, 

and then she wrote: “Miss A- is a ephat pimjet” and read 

it, “Miss A- is a good teacher.” Then she asked for the 

name of another teacher and wrote: “Miss B-— is a ephat 

pimjet,” which she read, “Miss B-is a good teacher.” Some¬ 

times she would write little songs and verses, the music without 
melody, the words unintelligible. Luella’s practical ability was 
good. She could sew in spite of her deformed hand, and was 
capable about housework. She loved to put the schoolroom in order. 
She could crochet quite skillfully, and she liked to draw. 

Luella learned the letter names from the rote song. The letters 
were written on the board in four lines, like a verse, and she prob¬ 
ably retained it in her visual memory. She then pointed to the 
letters as she sang the song. Finally individual letters were called 
for by the teacher, and found by repeating all the previous ones. 
This and word building by letter cards, rote spelling, and spelling 
from the written or printed word, finally served to fix the letter 
names. To fix the sounds was still more difficult. It was done by 
the visual method for teaching phonics, supplemented by much 
spelling and by having the letter sounds given slowly by the teacher 
and the name supplied by the child. 

After a year in the observation class, Luella was given her second 
mental examination. This time her mental age was 9 years and 4 
months, and her intelligence quotient exactly the same, 86. In as¬ 
sociation by opposites, her score in the oral form of the test had 
gone up from 55 to 67.5. No other supplementary tests were given 
except academic ones. Luella was still unable to read. She called 
dog “ ball,” and was utterly helpless in the face of a page from a 
first reader. She wrote a very few words correctly from dictation—- 
man, cat, dog, boy, and hat. Some of these same words she failed 
to recognize in print. However, her attempt to write “room” 
resulted in “ rune,” “ child ” was “ tont,” and “ good ” was “ could.” 

Luella was retained in the observation class the second year. By 
the middle of the year, Miss Ferris felt that she had done all she 
could for the child. She was making little progress and was harder 






CASE REPORTS. 


67 


to control. Her interest in the boys seemed abnormally great and 
her behavior was silly. At times she used foul language to other 
children. She was less well-cared for than she had been before, 
and there was an impression that her family was losing interest in 
her and becoming impatient. Perhaps her new stepfather was 
unsympathetic. None of us thought she was as yet a candidate 
for a class for defectives, but we were convinced that she could 
never be sent on in a regular grade. Accordingly, we recommended 
her for transfer to an opportunity class nearer her home, where 
she would have the advantage of small classes and instruction in 
sewing and housework. She was enrolled in this school in February 
of 1919. At the time of the transfer Luella’s mother went to see 
Miss Ferris to discuss the matter. She cried, seemed very unhappy, 
and gave the impression that life was very difficult and the future 
dark, for she was doing some things of which she was ashamed 
and which worried her. She was most appreciative of the kind of 
influence which had surrounded Luella in the class, and uneasy 
about her neighborhood environment. 

At first the opportunity school reported that she had taken hold 
of the work beautifully. She was placed in a third grade. Her 
number work was reported as of third-grade rank, and she was 
reading, though very imperfectly, in a second reader. At the end 
of the year Luella was promoted to a fourth-grade opportunity 
class. In January of that year (1920), she was given her third 
mental examination. Luella was now 12J years old. Her mental 
age was 8 years and 10 months, and her intelligence quotient 71. 
No supplementary tests were given. In oral.reading her rank was 
that of a child who has completed the first grade. In arithmetic 
her attainment was about that of the end of the second grade for 
addition, but she could not do subtraction. Spelling was of second- 
grade level, though some of her errors were very bad ones. For 
instance, “ sold ” she spelled “ slot,” and “ soon ” she spelled “ sloun.” 

Luella’s schoolroom behavior was never good. While in the 
observation class she would at times make pitifully hard efforts to 
reform, with some success. At other times she was “ just a little 
demon.” In the opportunity class, too, she gave trouble and seemed 
to grow more, rather than less, difficult. She was so uncontrolled 
that if one of her classmates irritated her she tried to strike him. 
Her efforts at control grew less. 

Luella’s falling intelligence level, her lack of school progress, and 
difficult behavior all made us feel that she was a suitable candidate 
for the school for defectives. She was transferred there in April of 
1920. After a year in the school the teachers reported that she was 
doing second-grade w T ork very indifferently. She could read in the 
first three readers in the sense that she could call most of the words, 


68 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


but she still failed to grasp the thought of what she read, and missed 
many essential words. She disliked reading. Her number work 
was somewhat better, and her handwork good. The child was, 
as before, unruly and stubborn when her inclination did not go with 
the task. At other times she was apt to be affectionate and anxious 
to please. She had apparently ceased to use vulgar language—a 
habit which rarely escapes the vigilance of the teachers of the 
special school. 

Miss Ferris visited the family in July, 1921. She found them liv¬ 
ing in a pleasant rented house, where they had two roomers. The 
half brother was in the Navy, and was sending money home regularly. 
The stepfather worked in a paper factory. The mother and the 
house were neat, but Luella, tall and thin, was dressed in dirty ragged 
clothes with sandals on her feet, but no stockings, her hair unkempt, 
her face pale and hollow, and her shoulders stooped. She was a 
pitiable object. Her neglected appearance the visitor interpreted 
as the expression of her own wilfullness. She still kept her cheerful 
smile, though she seemed to understand that something was wrong, 
and that she must make the best of it. To entertain her caller she 
sang a simple cheap street song, playing an accompaniment on the 
piano—a painful performance. 

Luella’s mothers eyes filled with tears as she looked at her and 
told Miss Ferris how deeply disappointed she felt at the child’s 
continued inability to progress at school. She said that she was 
sure it was “ spite work ” which had sent Luella to the special school, 
but she did not say it with conviction. The child’s apparent neglect 
had led at one time to‘a complaint to the humane society and a visit 
from its officer. The mother was still filled with indignation at 
the memory. The officer, like Miss Ferris, had found nothing 
inimical to the child’s welfare in the home. 

The.outlook for Luella is discouraging. Neither her ability nor 
her behavior holds forth hope of success in even the simplest career. 
She was never a modest, clean-minded child. Undue sex interest is 
already evident* Her one asset is her practical ability in house¬ 
work and sewing. The best hope is in a protected domestic life at 
home, but her mother, while still interested in her, and feeling her 
problem poignantly, is scarcely capable of coping with it perma¬ 
nently. Institutional life seems the only wise solution. 


Case 11. 


CASE REPORTS. 



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70 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


CASE 12. 

Catherine first came to the office in September, 1917. She was 
then 9 years and 5 months old and had a mental age of 7 years and 
8 months and an intelligence quotient of 81. Her supplementary 
tests were some of them above and some below this level. In associa¬ 
tion by opposites she was a complete failure. In picture completion 
and substitution she had 9 and 10-year records. She succeeded with 
the construction puzzles with a 6-year record on A and a 13-year 
record on B. Catherine’s physical condition was exceptionally good. 
She was a rosy, rugged, aggressive child, with a pleasant smile and 
an attractive voice. No physical defects were discovered in the 
medical examination. Her eyes and ears were entirely normal. In 
spite of her good physical condition and her relatively good intelli¬ 
gence quotient, her school work amounted to very little. She had 
failed in the first and second grades and had finally been placed in 
the third grade without having done the preliminary w6rk. 

Catherine had a neat, fairly well-to-do, and cheerful home. The 
family consisted of mother and father, good, wholesome English 
working people, and an older brother and sister. There was one mar¬ 
ried sister. The brother, at the age of 14 years, was in the sixth 
grade, and w r as given an Otis group examination in December, 1919. 
On this his intelligence quotient was 78. He repeated the sixth grade, 
and then went to work, w T here he has held a position as an errand 
boy for almost a year, and has given satisfaction. The older sister 
was a saleswoman in a department store, and was a very nice, attrac¬ 
tive girl. She, too, had had trouble with school w 7 ork in the early 
grades, but had suddenly blossomed out and had finished the eighth 
grade at 16 years. The family were not troubled about Catherine’s 
school failure, because they thought she would be like her older sister. 
The mother, father, and older sister all worked away from home, but 
evenings at home were pleasant. All of the older members of the 
family were willing to help Catherine, but they petted and spoiled 
her too much. 

When Catherine entered the class she had made a start at reading 
but knew less than half of the first-grade words. Her writing was 
poor, numbers entirely uncomprehended, and spelling impossible. 
W T hile she could sound out words phonetically, they seemed to have 
no meaning for her. She was an observant child. Nothing escaped 
her but the content of her lessons. Her outstanding characteristic 
was her social sense—her intense interest in people. She seemed 
to be so deeply interested in the other children that there was no 
way to get her to attend to her lessons. When the teacher was called 
to the telephone or was answering the questions of a visitor, Cather- 


CASE REPORTS. 


71 

ine would act as teacher and administer affairs with real grace and 
precision. The children enjoyed it as much as Catherine. When 
the teacher tried the experiment of letting her completely alone for 
a period of time, after giving her some work to do, she would sit for 
as much as half an hour content in observing everyone around her 
and now and then giving some help or advice. She could no more be 
enticed or compelled to learn by any of the usual methods than the 
proverbial pony could be made to drink. People alone could inter¬ 
est her, and people responded generously with an interest in her. 
Men particularly found her attractive. Two of the masculine school 
officials who came in contact with her commented on Catherine’s 
charms, though Catherine was acquitted of any conscious effort to 
attract the attention of men or to be unduly pleased by it. The 
people in the tenement house where she lived all loved her and 
called her their singing bird, because she always came up the stairs 
singing. When Fred was ill and Miss Ferris went to see him his 
special request was that she would send Catherine to visit him. 

Finally the teacher tried to turn her social instincts to account 
by saying to her, “ Catherine, will you teach this little child these 
words for me?” All aglow she tried, but she did not know the 
words herself! That brought her to the teacher with a real wish 
to know. For the first time she had a motive for learning which 
neither native interest nor an interest in her own success could sup¬ 
ply. The joy of teaching others proved to be in itself a potent 
enough force to make her learn many a lesson. She learned by the 
use of phonics, by comparing and by rote spelling, but seldom by the 
use of context. It was the mechanics of reading which she con¬ 
quered, and the result was little better than calling words. The 
stories had to be read aloud by other children before she could derive 
their content. 

In numbers she was little better. Numbers seemed to call forth 
the “ negative will.” Given some bit of the school housekeeping to 
do she was prompt and efficient, but lessons often roused antago¬ 
nism. For this reason she was frequently stubborn and sulky 
with her teachers, and they alone failed to feel her charm. The 
teacher to whom she went after leaving the observation class reported' 
to us that the child was accomplishing nothing and was in a constant 
state of resistance to authority, but always charming to her childish 
companions. She displayed at times a most unchildlike conceit, 
which, combined with her tendency to insubordination, made her a 
frequent problem of discipline. The whole picture suggested a child 
of small ability, but far from humble spirit, who reacted to her con¬ 
tinued failures with aggressive conceit and resistance to attempts at 
instruction. 


72 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


In March, after six months in the class, the teacher’s notebook 
said: 

Reading very much improved, but had to sound out the word “ winter ” 
before she could pronounce it. Could not get it from the context. The word 
“ child ” she insisted on reading “ chilled,” although she was reading about 
children. The fact that the passage made no sense if the word were chilled 
did not concern her in the least. 

A few weeks later the notebook says: 

She has taken a surprising sprint forward. She seems to be interested in 
the work for its own sake. These last two weeks have done wonders for her. 

In May, after eight months in the class, the record is: 

In spite of occasional lapses, Catherine has gone forward until she is doing 
fairly good third-grade work. My conclusion is that her trouble was never 
inability alone but inability in combination with pure willfulness. 

What this comment does not make clear is the fact that probably 
the willfulness and negativism were secondary results of continued 
failure and consequent criticism. 

When she was retested in June, 1918, Catherine’s intelligence 
quotient had fallen from 81 to 80. She was still a failure in the 
construction puzzles and her opposites test was very poor—45 per 
cent on an easy list. In substitution she had improved very much; 
her record was normal. She failed in a Trabue sentence completion 
test; only two sentences were correct. Her academic tests were only 
those of the second grade, though her teacher felt that she could 
have done better had she wished. Her small accomplishment led us 
to recommend an opportunity class for the following year, but for 
some reason she was kept in a regular fourth grade. It was the year 
of the epidemic, and although Catherine accomplished more than 
her teacher really expected of her, she could not be promoted to the 
fifth grade. Her work slumped toward the end of the year. 

The following year (1919-20) she was entered in an opportunity 
class, hoping that the handwork and the smaller group would 
enable her to do better than in a regular class. In February of 
that year, at the age of 12J years, Catherine was given her third 
test. Her mental age was 8 years and 10 months and her intelli¬ 
gence quotient 71. The only supplementary tests given were educa¬ 
tional ones. Her reading and spelling were of second-grade level, 
and her fundamentals of arithmetic of third grade. Her falling 
intelligence quotient and her very slight academic progress since 
leaving the observation class made us feel that the school for defec¬ 
tives was the most suitable place for the child. She was transferred 
to that school in the fall of 1920. Catherine’s teachers in the school 
for defectives reported that she took a great interest in cooking and 
in sewing as long as all went smoothly. If she were compelled to 


CASE REPORTS. 


73 


rip her work and do it over again she became furious. Rebellion 
against authority was still one of her outstanding qualities. Her 
extreme popularity with the other children continued, and as yet 
she was displaying no undue interest in boys. 

A visit to the home in July, 1921, found the family intact, and 
the mother and father engaged at home in their trade of custom 
tailoring. The father had had a stroke of paralysis, but had recov¬ 
ered sufficiently to work. The parents were entirely unable to see 
any serious defect in Catherine. Her school failure, they thought, 
was due to mere nervousness, which they attributed to an operation 
for appendicitis at the age of 7. They were very much discontented 
with her place in the special school, and said that the family had 
decided that she must finish the eighth grade if it took her until 
she was 21. 

The teachers of the school for defectives agree with us that 
Catherine is unquestionably a moron, not easy to recognize as such 
because of her superior social sense. She will make little, if any, 
further progress with academic work. A girl as beautiful, as so¬ 
cially attractive, and as hopelessly limited in intelligence as Cath¬ 
erine would be in a perilous position if it were not for her excellent 
home training and home care. As it is, she may get through life 
without suffering or causing any tragedies. So strong and indus¬ 
trious a child should be able to find some task in the industrial 
world to her liking, and perform it well under supervision. She 
will probably always be subject to sudden outbreaks of temper and 
fits of stubbornness. From the point of view of eugenics, Catherine 
should, of course, be prevented from bearing children, but so long 
as there are so many worse prospective mothers left at large, it 
does not seem fair to single her out for segregation or sterilization. 


Case 12. 


74 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


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CASE REPORTS. 


75 


CASE 13. 

Matthew vras first examined in November, 1916. He was then 
8 years and 6 months of age and tested 7 years and 6 months by the 
lerkes point scale. His intelligence quotient was 88. The only 
supplementary test given was substitution, in which he fell far below 
an 8-year standard because of his excessive slowness, though he 
was able to perform the test with fair accuracy. He had spent a 
year in the first grade, had been tried in the second, and put back 
into the first. 

Matthew was a beautiful child and very perfect physically accord¬ 
ing to the physicians. He had posed as a sculptor’s model. In 
spite of his apparently perfect physique he had a strange lack of 
muscular coordination. He was piquant, and charming in manner, 
was truthful, and produced on the whole the impression of being 
manly. However, he was at times seized with an impulse to be really 
cruel to his schoolmates. Matthew said -that his eyes were weak, but 
glasses failed to improve his school work. 

Matthew’s home of a few rooms was neat and clean. His father, 
an illiterate man, had deserted the family, though he still con¬ 
tributed to their support. The account of the affair which Matthew’s 
mother gave at the office was that her husband did not like hen 
because she was so much better educated than he. She had finished 
the fourth grade in school, whereas her husband could not read or 
write. She said the reason her husband was illiterate was that he 
had lived in a remote town in the country in Ohio and was never 
sent to school. Since some of his sisters finished the high school, 
this explanation seems improbable. After becoming adult, so his 
wife says, he had refused to try to learn to read and write. Matthew’s 
mother had a picture of four generations of the father’s family, in 

which Mr. B-’s father and grandfather appeared as competent- 

looking people, a farmer and a business man, while Mr. B- 

himself looked very inferior to them. He was a teamster. Later wo 
learned that not merely resentment at his wife’s superior education 
was responsible for his desertion but the attractions of another 
woman, with whom he lived for some time, were at* least a con¬ 
tributing cause. 

Matthew’s mother w T as a conscientious, hard-working woman, who 
supported the children by going out by the day for washing and 
cleaning. Her health had always been good. She was somewhat 
ignorant and superstitious. The children were fed on beer as babies, 
but they were sent regularly to Sunday school, and she was obviously 
doing her best to bring them up well. Suggestions from the school 
were gratefully received and carried out as best she could. 

30526°— 23-6 




76 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

There were three children, an older brother and a younger sister, 
and Matthew. The brother at 14 years was in the sixth grade. His 
mother said he had always been slow, and that she had considered 
Matthew brighter than the brother. She would not have been sur¬ 
prised if the school had complained of the inability of Arthur to 
learn, but she was astonished that Matthew had trouble. The little 
girl she considered the brightest of the three. 

When Matthew entered the class, after spending three years in the 
first and second grades, his academic accomplishment consisted in 
ability to copy script neatly. He knew few words and had not 
learned all of the letters. When he attempted to read he committed 
absurdities, such as calling “ they,” “ was,” or “ boy,” “ shall.” He 
had not understood that reading should make sense. Even after mas¬ 
tering all the letters through the rote song, he could not (or would 
not) connect them with the sounds. Matthew was one of the few 
children who seemed unwilling to learn. Apparently his years of 
failure had exasperated him so much that he hated the school regime. 
It took drastic measures to cure him of the habit of strolling in an 
hour late both morning and afternoon. His experience had led him 
to believe he could not learn, and believing this, he escaped from 
school mentally, even when present in the flesh. He idled and played, 
thought up devices for entertaining the class, and preyed on every¬ 
body’s time. Many a fine lesson did he ruin for everybody by creat¬ 
ing a diversion just as the point had been reached. 

When told to choose his own work, Matthew would sometimes 
choose the anchor blocks, but instead of following the colored plate 
he would make his own bridges out of rulers and blocks, and tear 
out paper men. He showed both imagination and ability to realize 
his imagined project, but no power to follow the plan of another. 
As far as possible, therefore, he was allowed to choose his own 
methods, but nothing seemed to serve to fix the school work in his 
head. Rote spelling, comparison of cards, sentence building, and 
word building all failed to leave impressions that could be^elied 
upon. Number combinations and counting by 2’s and 3 r s became 
loosely fixed, but his usual response to number lessons which the 
other children enjoyed was to say “I can’t.” Even when he oc¬ 
casionally performed part of a lesson, it seemed to disappear and 
leave no trace. 

By January, after four months in the class, the teacher writes • 

“ He seems to be settling down slowly into something resembling a 
contented animal stage of existence.” He had dropped his pranks 
and was dreaming instead. He had occasional flashes of wit and 
possessed an amount of general information which seemed to belie 
the impression of stupidity which his school failure produced. 


CASE REPORTS. 


77 


In February, after six months, in which his accomplishment was 
practically nil, he was reexamined by the Stanford revision, a method 
not previously employed. This time his mental age was 7 years 
and 10 months, and his intelligence quotient 81. In association by 
opposites he had a fair record on an easy list. Picture Completion 
was below an 8-year level, though not a complete failure. His intel¬ 
ligence quotient, combined with his occasional ability to think and 
think well, made us feel that he was not a candidate for a class for 
defectives, and we decided to keep him until the end of the year. 
Shortly after this Matthew began to study—perhaps for the purpose 
of retrieving his fortunes sufficiently to be allowed to remain in the 
class. A notion of what reading really meant seemed to come to him, 
through the process of constructing his own answers to questions 
which he had learned as night work. For instance, he learned, 
“ Where are you going at noon?” and constructed the answer, “ I am 
going home”; then, “Where are you going after school?” “I am 
going to the store for my mother,” etc. In writing the sentences, he 
asked for help in spelling and was given some phonetic drill. The 
method was slow, but progress was real. Meanwhile, his flashes of a 
superior type of intelligence continued. One of the class exercises 
was to have the teacher put a story on the board, the children read it, 
and then suggest a title for it. Matthew was frequently first with an 
apt title. For instance, when the story was about the day’s doings of 
a child from the time he got up in the morning until he went to bed 
again at night, and the teacher asked for a title, Matthew suggested 
easily, “A school day.” Late in May the notebook says: “ Reading 
a few pages in the second reader, spelling a few words, and per¬ 
fectly good in conduct.” 

Matthew’s tendency to hurt the other children had been com¬ 
pletely overcome by the end of the year by encouraging him to do 
things for the other children and to bring things to school for them. 
Being a philanthropist was an entirely new experience for Matthew, 
and he found it even more satisfying than inflicting pain. 

Matthew was retained in the observation class a second year in the 
hope that he would yet rise to the opportunity and make real progress. 
By January of his second year in the observation class (1919) Mat¬ 
thew, was still an academic failure. His reading was below a first- 
grade standard and his arithmetic barely first grade. He was given 
a third mental examination at this time at the age of 10 years and 7 
months, and had a mental age of 8 years and 6 months, and an intel¬ 
ligence quotient of 80. His supplementary tests were all below an 
8-year level except Healy picture completion No. 1, which seemed 
to call out one of his flashes of superior ability, though it had not 
done so before. In that his score was as good as the average child 


78 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


of 15 years. Association by opposites, the easy list, gave a score 
of 62.5 per cent accuracy; the Pintner cube test, a 7-year score; 
construction puzzle A, a failure; and the substitution test, a score 
below the 8-year norms on the first two pages. After he had 
completed* two pages, he complained of fatigue and begged to be 
excused from the rest. Matthew’s bad failure, after five years of 
faithful teaching, the fact that his intelligence quotient was falling 
rather than rising, and his failure in supplementary tests made us 
feel that he was a suitable candidate for a school for defectives, 
though we rarely sent children with as high a mental test record as 
his, or those with as good an ability to tell stories and entertain. 

Matthew entered the special school in January. A month later his 
mother called to protest. She objected to the distance, and said that 
Matthew had begun to steal money from her and to run away. She 
was very much Worried. In September she protested again, but was 
persuaded to return Matthew to the school. His car fare was paid on 
stormy days. Meanwhile, one of the teachers of the special school, 
who was also Matthew’s Sunday-school teacher, took an interest in 
the child and succeeded in reconciling him so thoroughly to the school 
that even his mother reported that Matthew was very happy and that 
he had ceased to worry her at all in behavior. 

In January of 1920, about a year after entering the special school, 
Matthew was given his fourth mental test, at the age of 11 years and 
7 months. His mental age was 8 years and 10 months, and his intelli¬ 
gence quotient 76. His oral reading was still much below the stand¬ 
ard for the end of the first grade, his spelling was of first-grade rank, 
and his arithmetic second grade. Since the. Stanford test had been 
used so often, we gave him the National intelligence scale to secure 
another mental age rating. On this his record was much poorer. 
His score was 23, his mental age 7 years and 5 months, and his intel¬ 
ligence quotient only 61. 

Our last word from Matthew was in July, 1921, when Miss Ferris 
visited his home. She found the family reunited. The father had 
come back repentant after 8 years’ absence and a very unfortunate 
experience with the other woman, and the mother had taken him 
back partly because she had injured herself in working and was 
scarcely able to keep on. The man owned his own truck and was 
working steadily and successfully. They were thinking of buying 
their own home. The older brother was at work as a press feeder, 
and was steady and reliable. He helped with the support of the 
family. Matthew was behaving well and had been earning $1.50 a 
week by helping a market man on Saturday. His mother was still 
feeling grieved that he made so little progress with reading and 
realized how handicapped he would be if he remained unable to read. 
She still tried to interest him, but could not succeed. She was greatly 


CASE REPORTS. 


79 

pleased, however, that it was now possible to leave her purse about 
the house without having money disappear from it and that 
Matthew showed no tendency to run away or be unruly. She felt that 
his stay in the observation class had been very helpful to him. Like 
so many mothers of abnormal children, Matthew’s mother had a 
superstitious explanation of his peculiarities. She attributed them to 
prenatal influence. Some pictures of mermaids in a book belonging 
to the older child got on her nerves, and she became obsessed with 
the idea that her unborn babe w T as a mermaid. His unaccountability 
and his love for the water she attributed to this source. 

Matthew s teacher in the special school made a report on him 
which had a familiar ring. He seemed bright, she said, in every¬ 
thing but his studies. Even the manual work of the school failed to 
appeal to him. He refused to try the work of the shop, and his 
manual-training teacher reported that he idled, played, and stole the 
materials. 

We have no hesitation in calling Matthew a defective child, but 
he is not the common type of defective for two reasons—his general 
understanding and flashes of brilliance are much above the level of 
the common defective; and he has a twist in his personality which 
we are tempted to call definitely psychopathic. There is a feeling of 
uncertainty about what he will do next on the part of everybody who 
is at all responsible for him. His mother is constantly oppressed 
with a nameless fear whenever he is out of her sight. He has little 
power of inhibition, and there is no reason to think he can ever cope 
with any real temptation which comes to him. So far the only im¬ 
pulse of a criminalistic type which he had displayed was that to hurt 
other children—a tendency which seemed to have been conquered 
in the observation class. There is no prospect that he will ever ac¬ 
quire a usable knowledge of reading or written arithmetic. Alto¬ 
gether he presents the picture of a child of fine possibilities which 
are unable to function because of some fundamental lack. He is 
both the most promising child of the group and its worst failure. He 
may, like his father, be able to earn a living, but he will always be a 
weak link in the social chain and he may be the source of future 
tragedies. 


Case 13. 


80 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 



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CASE REPORTS. 


81 


SUFFERERS FROM SPECIAL DEFECTS. 

CASE 14. 

Everett was first brought to the laboratory in April, 1917. At 
that time he was just 9 years of age. On the Yerkes point scale 
his mental age was 8 years and his intelligence quotient 89. His 
supplementary tests were somewhat below this level. In the Pintner 
cube test he had only a 5-year record. In substitution he was accu¬ 
rate, but far slower than the average 8-year-old. He failed to 
solve construction puzzle B. His Ellis object memory test was 
that of a normal 9-year-old, and construction puzzle A of a 16-year 
record. He had an excellent record for his age in association by 
opposites. Everett was at this time in the second grade, but was 
unable to read. He had spent a year each in the first and second 
grades. His work was medium and he had passed each time. The 
source of his trouble was a terrible illness which occurred in August, 
after he had completed the second grade. 

Before his illness Everett’s physical condition had been good. He 
had been well as an infant and had had no serious sicknesses. Weak¬ 
ness of control of the kidney was the only physical defect noted and 
this disappeared after his illness. His mother said he was a bit 
wild and hard to control, always more interested in play than in 
lessons, though he was never difficult to manage at school. 

The illness which produced so profound an effect was at first 
diagnosed as intestinal poisoning. After Jour days the child became 
unconscious and remained so for a week. During this time he had 
one convulsion after another, involving his left arm and face only. 
The doctors almost gave up hope of saving his life. After a con¬ 
sultation, the diagnosis of meningitis was finally decided upon. 

In three weeks after regaining consciousness Everett was around 
the house again. It then became evident that he had mentally 
returned to a state of infancy. He could walk but could under^ 
stand very little spoken language. He had even forgotten the use 
of many familiar objects and had to learn to feed himself again. 
He also had to learn to understand spoken language and to talk. 
Of course all trace of what he had learned at school had disap¬ 
peared. 

No attempt at formal teaching was made until the following Jan¬ 
uary. By that time he had regained his knowledge of the world of 
objects and had learned to talk. He seemed superficially to be nor¬ 
mal. He was placed in the second grade in school. In three months 
he had regained his knowledge of numbers and had learned to write 
again. He could copy print into script very well. Reading, how¬ 
ever, eluded him. At this time he was brought to the laboratory for 


82 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


his first test. The recommendation was to begin all over again with 
reading under a skillful teacher. 

Everett’s family consisted of father, mother, and a little sister 6 
years younger than himself. His father was a successful business 
man and his home conditions were excellent. His mother was de¬ 
voted to the children, well educated, but not highly intelligent. She 
w r as troubled by Everett’s condition but did not fully understand it, 
and was a bit inclined to be impatient about it. Her solution was to 
behave as nearly as possible as though there was nothing the matter 
with the child, partly because it hurt her pride to admit that there 
was. In pursuance of this plan, although Everett had made little 
progress with reading by the end of the year, he was placed in the 
third grade. At the same time the child was transferred to another 
school. He failed so badly in the third grade that his teacher thought 
he ought to be in a class for defectives and asked for another mental 
examination. 

At 9 years and 8 months, measured by the Stanford revision of 
the Binet scale, Everett measured 8 years and 7 months and had an 
intelligence quotient of 89. His substitution test was more rapid 
than before, though still below standard for his age. The Pintner 
cube test was better, a 10-year record instead of a 5-year. The con¬ 
struction puzzles were similar, a success with A but a failure with B. 
The child was recommended to enter the observation class, but his 
mother did not finally transfer him until March, 1918, when he was 
10 years old. Home tutoring had been tried meanwhile, but without 
success. 

When he entered the class he was still unable to read. He could 
not connect letter and sound, and he could not remember word forms. 
He could copy printed pages in very good script, without knowing a 
single word which he copied. Miss Ferris commented on the sudden 
puzzled frown and vacant expression which was a frequent occur¬ 
rence on some days and nearly absent on others: “ It is,” she 
said, “ as though a sudden air pocket had been encountered by his 
thoughts.” 

Everett was anxious when he came to the class to read in the third 
reader. He seemed to feel it a personal disgrace to be put back into a 
second or first reader, a feeling which may have been fostered by his 
mother’s attitude. Of course, he was allowed to try, but it was futile. 
He did not know even such common words as “ with ” or “ man ” or 
“ bring.” His speaking vocabulary was excellent. He could neither 
recognize nor spell number words such as “ eleven,” “ twelve,” or 
“ twenty,” though he was fairly proficient in number work so long as 
he did not need to express it with written words. 

Everett was at first much disturbed by the noise of the observation 
class. The other children studied aloud, and he said he could not 


CASE REPORTS. 


83 


study in all that noise. He was told to study aloud himself and 
think only about the story he was reading, and then he would not hear 
the others. He had to have a great deal of help to begin to study. 
The teacher had to be at hand to tell him the words he did not know 
and could not make sense without. Gradually he began to realize 
the story through the words, and then he began to get words from 
the context. Heading aloud seemed to help him, and he read a great 
deal. The reading was varied by word building and by memorizing 
the poem from the printed page (a great achievement), and then 
copying it on the blackboard from memory. Tutoring children who 
knew less than he was a pleasure to him and seemed to help the sense 
of isolation which his trouble had fostered. Less than three months 
from the time he entered the class the teacher’s notes say: “ He reads 
stories to the younger children and enjoys reading them.” Number 
words he finally learned from using them in problems. 

The kind of work he found hardest and seemed to resent was the 
language lessons, in which the task was to build up sentences from 
color words and size words. It was, perhaps, distasteful to him be¬ 
cause the ideas expressed were so far within his grasp, though the 
technique of expressing them was still difficult. The teacher would 
say to him: “ Everett, how is it that you have not written your 
sentences ? How can I help you ? ” Everett would reply with easy 
confidence, and as though it settled the matter, “ Oh, I can do them 
all.” “ But how are you to know that you can unless you do them? ” 
the teacher would ask, whereupon he would set manfully to work, 
but with very indifferent success. 

About this time most of the children of Everett’s: group were sent 
to try the work in a regular third grade. Everett, perhaps prompted 
by memories of the failures and humiliations of the regular class, 
begged to be allowed to stay, and was allowed to do so, although it 
was not possible to give him as much individual attention as before, 
since a new group was introduced into the class who had to be 
started in their work. 

At the end of this school year, in June, 1918, Everett was exam¬ 
ined in the laboratory for the third time. On this occasion his in¬ 
telligence quotient had risen from 89 to 96. This time he had a 
9-year record on the substitution test (the set of symbols used was 
different each time) and a normal record in association by opposites. 
He was still somewhat painfully slow in his reactions, though it was 
less noticeable than on previous occasions. His improvement in 
reading was extraordinary. He could fulfill first-year requirements 
in oral reading. In arithmetic he could almost meet the third grade 
standard. Since he had learned in this class far more in four months 
than he had in over a year before, the laboratory recommended that 


84 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

he remain in the observation class to see if he could not more nearly 
regain his normal position in school. 

Everett’s parents were most appreciative of what the observation 
class had done, but they were, as before, keenly anxious to have him 
removed from any type of special class and returned to a regular 
grade. Everett, too, was anxious to get back to school in the suburbs 
where there were trees and play space. Accordingly, in the fall 
he was entered in a fourth-grade room, after having been tutored 
all summer. 

Everett finished the fourth grade the following year sufficiently 
well to be promoted to fifth. In March, 1920, during his year in the 
fifth grade, he was examined for the fourth time. On this occasion, 
at the age of 12 years, his intelligence quotient was 92. On standard 
educational tests he ranked third grade (barely) in reading and 
fourth grade in spelling and arithmetic. It was still impossible for 
Everett to write an intelligible school composition. His handwriting 
was almost illegible when he undertook to write consecutive sentences, 
and the spelling weird in spite of the fact that he did fairly well 
in formal spelling lessons. He could not himself read what he had 
written. The condition was suggestive of some type of aphasia. 
His oral work was far better, but he failed of promotion. 

So pronounced was Everett’s failure in the fifth grade, that his 
teachers did not encourage him to go to summer school. Everett, 
however, begged to be recommended, and went faithfully all sum¬ 
mer, a long distance on the cars. His mother said it was the first 
time he had shown any initiative about his education. The teachers 
at the summer school said that for the first three weeks Everett sat 
and sat, staring into space. Then one of them had a heart-to-heart 
talk with him, and, to the surprise of everyone, he roused himself, 
took hold, and made fine progress. His English was poor in form 
only. He could give a well-organized talk and his thinking was 
always clear and original. In spite of his miserable writing and 
spelling, he passed in all of his studies and was recommended for 
the B sixth grade. 

Everett’s home was visited in July, 1921. His care and surround¬ 
ings are always of the best. His mother is still intent on obliterat¬ 
ing, if possible, all trace of his illness. She thinks he is forgetting 
everything connected with it, and she wishes him to forget. It is 
never mentioned in his presence. At his mother’s request Miss 
Ferris did not talk with him, for fear it would revive memories. 
A sight of him at school revealed a face somewhat saddened by 
failures, with his habit of frowning still present, but with a differ¬ 
ence. The frown seemed to have become mere' habit—a mannerism 
no longer, as at first, connected with his thinking. 


CASE REPORTS. 


85 


Just how much of Everett’s difficulty is to be attributed to his 
illness it is difficult to say. The principal of one of the schools he 
attended assured us that Everett’s family was of very limited intelli¬ 
gence. His uncles had attended the school before him, and not one 
of them had gotten beyond the sixth grade. A first cousin, tested 
in the laboratory at the age of 11 years and 11 months, had a mental 
age of 9 years and 3 months and an intelligence quotient of 78. 
His supplementary tests, except for the construction puzzles, were no 
better. He was failing in the fourth grade, and his reading was no 
better than that of first grade. Another cousin left school at 15 
years, after completing the seventh grade. His intelligence quotient 
on an Otis group test was 88. A third cousin completed only the 
sixth grade in the regular school, and then attended the sewing- 
trades school for two years. She has worked in tailoring shops 
since, and is successful in keeping positions and in earning at least 
an average wage. 

The principal thought Everett was just like the rest of the family, 
and would have had trouble with school regardless of his illness. 
Two important pieces of evidence tell against this point of view. 
Everett’s intelligence quotient is normal, and maintains its level 
from year to year. His type of failure, too, is quite different from 
that of the ordinary dull child. His peculiar handwriting, so 
cramped, irregular, and illegible, is totally different from that of 
any ordinary child of whatever level of intelligence. His ability 
to think clearly and to do excellent oral language work, which he 
is totally unable to transcribe, is not in the least suggestive of the 
typical dull child. Our judgment is that Everett’s difficulty is 
chiefly the result of his illness, and belongs to the general class of 
troubles known as aphasias. It is very possible that he could be 
cured, or at least very much helped, if anyone with sufficient skill 
in the reeducation of aphasics could give the time to it. It is possi¬ 
ble, too, that even without intensive skilled help he may gradually 
improve. We believe that a mastery of reading and writing is all he 
needs to carry him on to a high-school education. 


Case 14. 


86 


treatment of young SCHOOL FAILURES. 


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CASE REPORTS. 


87 


CASE 15. 

Da\ id was first brought to our attention by the principal of his 
school m April, 1918. He was at that time 10 years and 4 months 
old. His intelligence quotient on the Stanford scale was 95; his 
mental age 9 years and 10 months. His results showed a wide scat¬ 
tering of tests, from 6 through 14 years. In general, his immediate 
auditory memory was noticeably poor, while his judgment and com¬ 
mon sense were definitely superior. The substitution test yielded a 
noimal record that of a 10-year-old child, including the memory 
page. In Healy picture completion test No. 1 he had an unusual 
recoid a perfect performance. David had spent a year in kinder¬ 
garten, three years in the first grade, and was then failing in the 
second grade. 

David’s general physical condition was good and he made a fine 
impression. He was a splendid, direct-appearing little fellow, who 
looked straight at you when he talked. He was always clean and 
neat. The doctor reported a slight visual defect, not sufficient to be 
corrected, and a slight auditory defect, but insufficient to be a serious 
handicap in a schoolroom. He had adenoids w T hich had re-formed 
after a removal at 4 years of age. He also suffered from a speech 
defect, a sort of inability to get his words out. David had a history 
of several illnesses, reported to us by an older sister. At 6 months 
he had an attack in which he lost his sight completely for a few days 
and then recovered it. At 18 months his palate became paralyzed. 
Tonsils and adenoids were removed at the age of 4 years. During 
the same year he had an abscess which necessitated a mastoid opera¬ 
tion. He lost the drum of his right ear and went through another 
operation on his ear at 5^ years. 

David’s family consisted of his mother, an older brother, and two 
older sisters. The father had deserted the family about six years 
before for another woman. The court compelled him to pay alimony. 
He had been a dissipated and, according to David’s mother, a dis¬ 
eased man. The mother, in spite of constant ill health, worked in the 
leaf room of a tin-foil factory, which kept her away from home most 
of the time from 7 in the morning to 7 at night. Only one child, the 
oldest daughter, was of working age. She was one of the first girls 
registered in our placement office. She had gone to work at 16, after 
completing the eighth grade. During the three years since leaving 
school she had held three positions for factory work, interrupted by 
two illnesses of several months each, pneumonia and rheumatic fever. 
About the time we first knew David she had gone on the vaudeville 
stage after taking a three months’ course of training. It is interest¬ 
ing to note that two years earlier the comment of the placement sec¬ 
retary had been: “ Painted—much of her person displayed through 


88 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


a filmy waist. Dressed in black. Does not seem to be as common as 
her appearance would indicate.” David’s home was always decent 
and as comfortable as his mother could make it. The home atmos¬ 
phere was good. Not only the mother but the brothers and sisters 
were interested in David and sympathetic with him. Later the 
brother went to work and contributed all his earnings to the family. 
The second sister is only just of working age (August, 1921). 

After his three years in the first grade David had been placed in 
the second, not because he was ready for it but because it seemed 
cruel to keep him another year in the first grade. He knew neither 
word nor letter, nor could he deal with number combinations above 
10. His first-grade teacher was one who was very successful with 
normal and superior children, but had little skill or patience with 
those who presented unusual difficulties. In addition to David, four 
other children of normal intelligence who had failed to learn to read 
under her ministrations were brought to our attention. The others 
all learned under other teachers, but David was not helped by the 
change. 

David entered the observation class in May, 1918. By fall his 
family had moved farther away and his attendance was irregular, 
partly because of the distance and partly because of the interrupted 
school term during the epidemic. In January, 1919, Miss Ferris felt 
that, in spite of fine effort when he was present, he had made no 
progress. It was still true that when he was asked to name a letter, 
any letter, he would invariably say first “ e ” and then “ n,” after 
which he would guess promiscuously any letter which came into his 
mind. It seemed impossible for him to learn and retain with cer¬ 
tainty a single letter form or word form. 

Thinking that perhaps inadequate auditory images of words were 
part of his trouble, David was sent to Miss Osborne of the oral school, 
for a period each day to see if she could teach him clear enunciation 
and help his speech defect. At the same time a sister of Miss Ferris, 
herself a very skillful teacher, came to visit. She became intensely 
interested in David, as all his teachers did—and devoted most of her 
time for three weeks to helping him individually. Under these con¬ 
ditions David learned his letters quite rapidly. Miss Ferris thought 
this was largely the result of Miss Osborne’s drill. He also learned 
to read several pages in a primer. The effort required was heroic, 
both on his part and that of his teacher. In spite of his interest and 
genuine desire to learn, David was incapable of very prolonged 
periods of effort because mental fatigue set in rapidly. Even the few 
pages he had acquired were an uncertain possession. Sometimes he 
knew a word and again the same word eluded him. 

In June Miss Ferris reported that he could copy print into script 
perfectly, that he could write and add numbers, though at times he 


CASE REPORTS. 


89 


forgot the combinations, and that he knew a few words by sight, but 
still made the same mistakes over and over again. Miss Ferris 
thought part of the trouble was that in his four unprofitable and 
somewhat painful years in school he had learned to just sit and let 
things go by. 

Meanwhile, Miss Osborne had come to feel that some of the 
methods and materials used with the deaf children and the speech 
defectives were so helpful to David that she would like to have him 
full time and try her hand at teaching him. The process of show¬ 
ing him in the mirror how new words look in the mouth seemed to 
help him greatly in acquiring new words. When David was given 
his choice in the fall of 1919 between staying in the observation class 
and going full time to the oral school, he chose the oral school. Miss 
Ferris felt that, in addition to his enjoyment of the work, other factors 
influenced his choice. The oral school was held in the main building, 
while the observation class was conducted in a temporary building 
in the yard. David felt a bit sensitive about having the other boys 
see him go back and forth to the special class. Perhaps the fact that 
the deaf children could not hear his mistakes also influenced him. 
Miss Ferris’s notes say: “ I have heard his voice quiver and have seen 
the dismay of his brave little soul when another child’s eyes were 
fixed upon him in wonder while he struggled in vain with some 
familiar word.” Something of this he was saved in the oral school. 

David entered the oral school in the fall of 1919. In June, 1920, 
Miss Osborne wrote of him: 

He seems a normal 12-year-old boy except in reading. He goes to the at¬ 
tendance office, gets the car tickets and signs for me, buys things for the cook 
and always brings back the right change. His progress in reading has been 
slow but sure. He has read all of Miss Fuller’s primer, but still makes mis¬ 
takes on lists of words, such as those on page 78. In Miss Upham’s question 
book for second year he has had the lessons to page 22. He reads the ques¬ 
tion, answers it orally, and then writes question and answer on his tablet. 
His spelling is poor, but I can always tell what he is trying to write. He 
loves to be read to and can understand and reproduce orally any story suitable 
for sixth grade. In number work he has mastered not only addition but sub¬ 
traction of five and six place numbers. 

When in September of 1920 Miss Osborne was faced with the 
problem of David for another year, she felt that the doubtful mastery 
of a primer as the result of a year of individual attention was 
scarcely enough to warrant continuing the experiment without some 
reconsideration of the problem. Accordingly, she wrote to the labo¬ 
ratory asking for a reexamination of David. In her letter she said: 

Every teacher with whom he comes in contact becomes deeply interested in 
David and tries to help him, yet we feel that results are in an inverse ratio to 
the teacher’s time and energy. 


90 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


David’s second examination was given in September, 1920, when 
he was 12 years and 10 months old. This time his mental age, ac¬ 
cording to the Stanford test, was 11 years and his intelligence 
quotient 86. On graded opposites he had a 10^-year record. No other 
supplementary tests were given except educational ones. The ex¬ 
aminer felt that the fall in intelligence quotient from 95 to 86 need 
not be interpreted as a lowering of the level of intelligence, but rather 
as the effect of his enormous handicap in not being able to acquire 
what other children do through reading, or to use reading and writ¬ 
ing as a tool in dealing with increasingly difficult processes. 

David’s test in reading was a disappointment. It was no better 
than that of the average 6-year-old who has been in school about four 
or five months. In the first paragraph of Gray’s oral reading test 
he failed to recognize “ boy,” “ had,” “ the,” “ into,” and “ ran.” The 
only words he could spell correctly were those of the “ at ” family, 
and the word “ man.” Even the “ at ” family was not a certain pos¬ 
session. The word “ rat ” he wrote correctly the first time, but when 
it was dictated a second time he wrote “ rut.” For “can,” he wrote 
u cmon ”; for “ tan,” “ tom ”; for “ fan,” “ pom ”; and for “ pan,” 
“ thsn.” For “ it ” he wrote “ te.” 

His arithmetic was better. He was given the Woody tests in addi¬ 
tion and subtraction, and made third and fourth grade records, re¬ 
spectively. 

At about the same time David was examined by our psychiatrist, 
Doctor Fell. He found nothing abnormal about the boy so far as 
reflexes and muscular coordinations were concerned. There were 
no stigmata, and his glands and organs were normal. A slight deaf¬ 
ness was noted, but insufficient to account for his difficulty. Doctor 
Fell’s diagnosis was: 

Sensory aphasia, involving mostly visual memory. Evidently a lesion, but 
would require complete study to work out relative importance of visual and 
auditory elements. 

In our tests there were more evidences of defects of auditory 
than of visual memory. His reproduction of the drawings in year 
10 was perfect, and he performed the memory' portion of the substi¬ 
tution test normally for liis years. His immediate auditory memory, 
however, was defective. When the material to be remembered was 
not arbitrary symbols, but the content of a story, his auditory 
memory seemed good. The real failure seemed to be in the ability 
to form associations between visual symbols and sounds. 

In thinking over the possibilities for David for the coming year 
it suddenly occurred to several of us that there was one untried and 
promising possibility left for him in our schools, and that was the 
school for the blind. In Braille we had at hand a process of read- 


CASE REPORTS. 


91 


ing in which the visual elements were entirely excluded. It was 
possible that he could form normal associations between touch im¬ 
pressions and heard or spoken words when he could not form the 
corresponding associations with visual impressions. When Miss 
Dawes, principal of the school for the blind, was consulted, she was 
enthusiastic about tr}dng the experiment. 

Just as we had the matter of the transfer of schools arranged 
David arrived one morning with a note from his mother saying that 
the family had decided to move to Columbus the following week. 
We were all exceedingly disappointed at this sudden end of our 
part of the thrilling experiment of finding some way to teach David 
to read, but decided at once to transfer it to colleagues in Columbus. 
We wrote a complete report of our experiences to Mr. Collicott, the 
superintendent of schools in Columbus, and asked him to be on the 
lookout for David when he enrolled. Toward the end of October 
letters from Columbus told us that David was found, and that Dr. 
C. C. McCracken, of the University of Ohio, and Doctor Goddard, of 
the State Bureau of Juvenile Research, were holding conferences 
about him and planning to allow some of the graduate students 
of the university to work with him. In November Doctor Mc¬ 
Cracken wrote us that David’s family had returned to Cincinnati, 
and not long afterward David reappeared at the oral school. 

By this time Miss Ferris had secured some typewriters for her 
class, and another boy of about David’s age had been enrolled. Miss 
Ferris begged to have David returned to her for one more attempt 
before we resorted to the school for the blirfd. She started David 
and the new boy together, using the typewriter as the chief instru¬ 
ment of learning. The second boy, Frank, was a hunchback, a 
little older than David, who had never been sent to school because 
of his physical condition. Treatment had finally put him into con¬ 
dition sufficiently good for school attendance. He impressed his 
teachers as normal mentally, but his intelligence quotient was only 
79. He and David worked together, learning first the fingering of 
the typewriter. Then they committed to memory Bayard Taylor’s 
“A night with a wolf,” and read each stanza, using the word-finding 
method. Meanwhile, they worked at the mastery of the alphabet. 
Frank could call the alphabet by rote, but did not know the letters 
by sight. David could find many of the letters, using the small 
word builders. Together they patiently built up the alphabet and 
destroyed it time after time. David seemed to learn both the letters 
of the alphabet and the words of the poem. At least he could find 
the words and letters on the board. For a time Miss Ferris thought 
she was succeeding, but after about five weeks it was evident that 
while Frank was really learning to read, David, with the same meth- 
30526°—23-7 


92 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


ods and an application fully as good, was not. The apparent wave 
of progress subsided. Tested on a list of common words, such as 
“ who ” and “ was,” David was baffled and helpless. Miss Ferris then 
recommended the transfer to the school for the blind, which took 
place early in February, 1921. Frank remained with Miss Ferris 
and by June had completed first and second grade work. 

Several conferences w r ere held with Miss Lawes during which she 
was made thoroughly familiar with David’s history, and given 
copies of our various examinations and reports. Miss Burdge, the 
teacher who was to instruct him, also studied the records carefully 
and visited his home to explain the new experiment to his family. 
She found his mother eager to help. A series of photographs of 
David, from infancy down, impressed Miss Burdge very painfully 
with the gradual change in the child’s expression from the uncon¬ 
scious happiness and sweet temper of his young childhood to the 
unhappy, baffled, brooding, discontented sense of failure—failure in 
spite of all his efforts and application—revealed in his later pictures 
and in his daily expression. Like all his other teachers, she swore 
an inward oath that she would teach David to read if there were 
any possible way of doing it. 

The process of learning to read through his fingers rather than 
through his eyes was carefully explained to David, and he was told 
to keep his eyes off his work. He understood and complied with 
the instructions absolutely. To our joy he learned the Braille alpha¬ 
bet with normal speed. At the end of three weeks he had not only 
mastered the alphabet but was able to write simple sentences in 
Braille without error. Miss Burdge brought us samples of his 
work. At the end of a month his teachers made the interesting 
discovery that while he had conscientiously learned the Braille 
without the use of his eyes he was able to read it with his eyes as 
well as with his fingers. Meanwhile, he seemed to have no con¬ 
fusions about the Braille letters, wrote his simple sentences without 
errors, and seemed to be able to remember his families of words 
from day to day, a feat previously impossible to him. Upon making 
this discovery, his teachers decided (in my judgment prematurely) 
that there was no point in continuing with the Braille. If he 
could learn one set of symbols visually, they argued, he could 
another. Accordingly, they abandoned the Brailte, and returned 
once more to the attack on print. The fact that David seemed to 
read more confidently from the very large type books prepared for 
the classes in conservation of vision than from ordinary sized type led 
Miss Lawes to send him to the oculist of the school, Doctor Strieker, 
for a reexamination. The doctor discovered a defect which he 
thought worth correcting, and David began at once to wear the 
glasses. 


CASE REPORTS. 


93 


After one more month in the class, early in April, 1921, Miss 
Burdge brought David in to show us his progress. He read from a 
primer with some help. In the first paragraph of Gray’s oral 
reading test four words had to be supplied—“woods,” “wanted,” 
“ without,” and “ began.” “After ” he called “ from ”—obviously 
guessing from context. The paragraph took him over a minute. 
He then wrote sentences from dictation. The first one was, “The 
little boy can run.” David wrote it without the word little, but 
when he was asked to read it, read it three times with the word 
“ little ” in it. Finally, by making him point carefully to each 
word Miss Burdge led him to discover his mistake. He then wrote 
from dictation: “A big dog can play ”; “ Baby likes to play ”; and 
“ Baby can roll the ball.” Then, at Miss Burdge’s suggestion that 
he write some sentence about a bird, he wrote, “ The bird can fly 
to the nest ”; but the word “ nest ” he wrote “ tesn,” and corrected 
it only after suggestion. The concentrated effort required to write 
these sentences it would be hard to find excelled. It seemed to us, 
as we looked on, that the child was entangled in a mesh of con¬ 
fusions, bad habits, and misunderstandings acquired during his 
7 years of fruitless effort. It was as though he had never before 
grasped the idea that each little black word on the printed page 
had a distinct individuality and a meaning. Guessing, trying to 
supply words from context, and memorizing had become to him 
essential parts of reading. Apparently no conception of the definite¬ 
ness and precision of reading had before crossed his mind. His 
task was not merely to learn the new but to get rid of most of 
the old. 

By June we felt convinced that David really could be taught to 
read. He then knew 100 words by sight, confidently, and without 
the help of context. This result had been accomplished in spite of 
the fact that during the spring he was out of school five weeks with 
whooping cough. In order that he might not lose during the sum¬ 
mer, we arranged to have him join Miss Burdge’s summer class and 
go on with his instruction. Toward the end of July, David suddenly 
disappeared from school. Wlien Miss Burdge went to find out why, 
she discovered that his mother had suddenly died. The poor woman 
had worked on, ill but uncomplaining, until she had literally dropped 
in her tracks without asking for aid. An uncle of David from a 
neighboring town came and took the family home with him. The 
town is a small one where there are no special facilities for dealing 
with problem children. David’s uncle and aunt have an under¬ 
standing of his peculiar difficulties and wish him to continue in our 
schools.^ We hope the arrangement is now made to have David live 
in one of the home-like children’s institutions of the city while he 
attends school next year (August, 1921). 


94 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

The explanation of the fact that learning Braille gave David his 
real start in mastering print is by no means obvious. In observing 
the process, it seemed as though starting to learn to read all over 
again, with a completely new set of letter symbols, was what turned 
the trick. The new symbols he succeeded in learning without con¬ 
fusion, and with a real understanding of what he was doing as he 
went along. The process gave him his first clear conception of what 
reading meant and he was then able to translate into the old printed 
symbols, but with great difficulty because the old symbols were 
already a mass of confusions. It is probable, however, that the 
explanation goes deeper than this. It may be that the tactual motor 
tvpe of image necessary in learning the Braille was a type for which 
it was possible to form normal auditory and motor associations, 
whereas it was not possible starting with visual images. The path¬ 
ways in his association tracks leading to auditory centers may be 
open for tactual motor cues, but not for visual ones directly. The 
learning of Braille may have given him control of a new type of 
word and letter image, into which he is learning to translate the 
visual perceptions before they become cues for speech or writing. 


Case 15 


CASE REPORTS. 


95 


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96 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

A PSYCHOPATHIC CHILD 

CASE 16. 

Fred was first examined in October, 1917, when he was 7 years and 
8 months old. On the Stanford revision of the Binet scale, he 
measured 6 years and 8 months, giving him an intelligence quotient 
of 87. Fred’s supplementary tests were most uneven. He failed 
totally to understand what was required in either the opposites or 
the substitution tests. In the latter, he numbered the figures con¬ 
secutively and seemed totally incapable of doing anjdhing else with 
the test. In construction puzzle A he made a 13-year record. He 
failed in B, but could do it promptly after being shown how. In the 
Pintner cube test he did as well as the average 16-year-old. The 
examiner says, “It is impossible from these records to make a 
diagnosis.” When we saw him, he was failing in the first grade for 
the second time, but he had been absent a great deal. The chief 
complaint of the school, however, was not failure in his work, but 
very troublesome behavior. The teachers reported that Fred seemed 
interested in his work, but that he was very mean to the other chil¬ 
dren. He pinched them and hit them. When scolded, his fits of 
temper were terrible. Even when the only provocation was that he 
could not have all the attention he wanted, he would storm and scold 
and threaten. If he was reprimanded at school, his mother rushed 
to the school, made a scene, and defended her son. 

Fred’s physical condition was good. He was rather large and 
usually well cared for, though not always clean. No physical defects 
were discovered in his medical examination, except a tachycardia and 
enlarged axillary glands. He was excessively nervous. Miss Fer¬ 
ris’s account of him says that his expression, though usually sweet 
and rather pathetic, could change suddenly to rage, with reddened 
eyes. It seemed impossible at first for Fred to sit still in the ob¬ 
servation class. He was constantly moving in his seat and com 
tinually rising from it to sit on the desk where he would whirl from 
side to side, making all the movements of a parrot in confinement. 
If he were standing near a wall he would begin thumping it with a 
backward and forward movement of his body or head. He was 
cruel as a demon at times, striking, pinching, or otherwise mistreat¬ 
ing some luckless mate, and then saying with tears in his eyes, “I 
didn’t want to do it, I just did it,” which was probably true. 

Fred’s reactions were always the unexpected. Once, in despair 
caused by his unruly conduct, his teacher kept him after school and 
spanked him. Fred rose from his chastisement, his eyes swimming 
in tears, put his arms gently around his teacher’s neck, and kissed her. 
Both Fred and his mother had flashes of aesthetic appreciation and 


CASE REPORTS. 


97 


imagination. Once, when Fred was sick, the teacher took him some 
daffodils. She laid one of them on his pillow. Fred loved it there, 
but he said shortly, “ Put it into the water with the others, mamma. 
It is too warm. It can’t be happy here.” The mother obeyed his re¬ 
quest and turned the face of the flower toward Fred, saying, “ There 
now, it can look at you.” 

Fred’s family consisted of mother, father, and a younger brother. 
The father, a wood finisher by trade, was of German birth, and an 
uneducated man, but a steady workman and devoted to his family. 
They had lived in the same two-room rear tenement for 6 years, and 
have continued to live there since.we have known them. The rooms are 
large and pleasant enough, but habitually in a fearful state of dirt 
and confusion—as the home visitor put it, “An indescribable lot of 
junk was piled all over the place.” The younger brother of 5 years 
was a helpless idiot, who lay in his bed. playing with his claw-like 
hands and laughing or screaming senselessly. He seemed to have no 
control over eyes or voice. Since he had no control of his vital func¬ 
tions, the room was usually oppressive with disagreeable odors. 

Fred’s mother was a highly excitable woman who was dreaded at 
his former school because of the rows she made about imaginary 
grievances. Her education had been finished with the fifth grade and 
his father’s with fourth grade in Germany. She had a savage af¬ 
fection for her children. Nothing could persuade her to try hospital 
treatment for the younger child because she could not bear to be 
separated from him. She went about the streets unkempt to the last 
degree, carrying the poor idiot in her arms, large as he was. She 
had a reputation for profanity among the neighbors and was in a 
continual state of quarreling with somebody. Fred’s mother was de¬ 
voted to him after her fashion, and would have been glad to help him 
with lessons had she known how. Her method of helping was to do 
his night work for him. 

When Fred entered the class, after his year and more in the first 
grade, he could neither read nor write, but he knew some of the num¬ 
ber combinations. He called letters by their phonic powers, yet he 
could not connect them into words. Miss Ferris thought he had a 
real interest in his work. Fred was a child who was kept very closely 
to his tenement-house environment. His parents were afraid to have 
him on the streets and he was not allowed to go so far as the park to 
play, as many of the children did. In spite of his limitation, he was 
able to understand a variety of stories that were read aloud, and was 
eager to hear them. Various methods failed to give Fred a start in 
reading. The word method, the comparative method, the phonetic 
method were of no avail. Memorizing stories, which were written 
on the blackboard and read aloud by the other children, and subse¬ 
quently identifying the words, finally gave him a start. The type 


98 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


of story which brought the puzzling common words from a subordi¬ 
nate to a main position (see page 17), was of great assistance to Fred 
in mastering stock words. Numbers he learned from dominoes and 
from buying and selling games. By April he could write, had par¬ 
tially memorized the families of numbers, could copy print into 
script, and had a start in reading, when his progress was interrupted 
with an attack of typhoid fever. He was out of school the rest of the 
year. His mother reported that during his convalescence his out¬ 
bursts of temper were fearful and she could not control him. 

In June, although he was not in school, Fred was sent back to the 
laboratory for a second examination. This time his mental tests 
showed a fairly miraculous increase. His mental age was 8 years 
and 9 months, 5 months above his chronological age, and his intelli¬ 
gence quotient was 105. Instead of failing to* understand opposites, 
he had an accuracy of 70 per cent on an easy list. The substitution 
test was performed without an error, and in less than normal time. 
Picture completion was as well done as by the average adult (16 
points) and he had 12-year records in the two figure and casuist form 
boards. Only the five-figure form board, a 6-year record, fell below r 
his chronological age. His supplementary tests, therefore, would 
have given him an intelligence quotient of about 150. The excessive 
change from the previous test made us feel that great instability, 
rather than a characteristic mental level, was what the tests indicated. 

Fred was retained a second year in the observation class. By the 
end of the year he had completed two grades of academic work 
and was very much improved in behavior. His outbursts of temper 
became rare. Occasionally he was still seized with an impulse to 
hurt one of the other children. For instance, he suddenly grabbed 
David by the cheek and kicked him cruelly. David defended him¬ 
self and Fred came to the teacher shrieking that David had hurt him. 
When David explained, Fred seemed suddenly to remember and 
admitted that he had himself made the attack. As usual, he had 
no excuse to offer and seemed to wonder at himself. A physician, 
who happened to visit the class in January of that year, pointed 
Fred out as an incipient case of insanity, without having been told 
anything about him. However, Miss Ferris’s notes of June, 1919, 
say that Fred had stopped swearing and was usually a manly and 
well-behaved child. 

In the fall of 1919, Fred was transferred to an opportunity class 
in a neighboring school. In spite of his high quotient, he had not 
made up his academic work sufficiently to be returned to a regular 
grade. The smaller classes and manual work of the opportunity 
school made it, to our minds, a more suitable place for him. He was 
enrolled in a third grade. 


CASE REPORTS. 


99 


Since the laboratory now had the services of a psychiatrist, Fred 
was referred to our Doctor Fell soon after he entered the opportunity 
class. Doctor Fell found nothing wrong with the child physically, 
except a slight anaemia. His reflexes, coordinations, and all his 
organs were normal. No tics, tremors, or peculiarities were observ¬ 
able. The doctor says. 

History of violent outbursts of temper, bed wetting, nervousness, and lack 
of ability to progress in school would indicate a constitutional psychopathic 
condition of the emotionally unstable type. 

In January of the same year Fred was given his third mental test. 
The occasion was characteristic. Fred’s mother arrived with him 
at the office in a state of high indignation. Both she and Fred were 
scrubbed to an unprecedented state of cleanliness, and were even 
neat as to clothes. She assured us that Fred, who was as clean at 
school as we then beheld him, had been sent home to take a bath and 
get clean clothes, and that the teacher in sending him had used most 
offensive language to him in the presence of the class. We listened 
to her tale, soothed her as best we could, and meanwhile took ad¬ 
vantage of the occasion to reexamine Fred while he was in such a 
glorious state of cleanliness. This time his intelligence quotient 
was 101, with a scattering all the way from 8 to 16 years. The only 
supplementary test given was Healy picture completion no. 2. In 
this he had an 8-year record. His educational tests Avere all far 
below the expectation of his mental age of 10 years. They were 
below third-grade level. In reading he did not quite fulfill a second- 
grade requirement, his spelling was second grade, and his arithmetic 
poor second grade. 

In spite of his small accomplishment, Fred was promoted to a 
fourth-grade opportunity class the following year, and was passed 
to the fifth grade for the year 1921-22. In the summer he attended 
a vacation school. A visit to the home, in July, 1921, found the 
family all assembled. The idiot brother was still absorbing the 
loving attention of the family. Their attitude was that of the 
adoring mother with an attractive babe. The mother was sure he 
was improving and showed the visitor how he could take a step— 
which was an utterly impossible feat except as his mother held him 
and made him take a step. The child was still incapable of con¬ 
trolling his hands. Every day for nine days the mother was carry¬ 
ing the child on a long journey across the city for a nine-day prayer 
service which she hoped would work a miraculous cure. 

Fred had been given several sets of really good tools by his 
parents and his father had shown him how to use them, but nothing 
of any importance which Fred had made could be produced. There 
was no sign of aptitude with his hands. The home was in its usual 


100 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


state—tables, beds, and chairs all piled high with a confused mass of 
possessions, and dirt generously sprinkled over all. 

Fred presented an unusual combination of a consistently high, 
though erratic, mental-test level and continued academic failure. 
The laboratory was particularly interested to discover how long this 
state of affairs would continue. When Miss Ferris made her visit 
in July of 1921, she made an appointment for another test for Fred. 
On August 4 he arrived at the laboratory, once more in an immaculate 
state of cleanliness and accompanied by his mother, his father, and 
his idiot brother. The mother was particularly proud of the progress 
that the idiot had made. She again insisted that he had learned to 
walk, but her demonstration of his powers showed only too well that 
his walking took place only in the realm of his mother’s ardent and 
pathetic hopes. 

Fred’s mental age in this, his fourth examination, proved to be 
9 years and 11 months, one month less than in the examination given 
a year and a half earlier. His intelligence quotient was only 86. He 
failed this time in several tests in which he had succeeded before— 
the problems of fact in year 14 and the repetition of six digits in 
year 16. This reduction of intelligence quotient is what we had been 
expecting in Fred’s case for several years. If it ever goes up again 
materially, we can only feel that the vagaries of the psychopathic 
consciousness are even greater than we had supposed j>ossible. 

Fred’s educational tests gave him a rating of second grade in oral 
reading and less than third grade in silent reading, both in rate 
and in comprehension. His arithmetic is much better. Measured by 
the Woody scale for fundamentals, he ranks at the end of the fourth 
grade in addition, fifth grade in multiplication and subtraction, and 
sixth grade in division. We shall watch his progress in the fifth 
grade with great interest. 

Fred’s future is certainly enigmatic. He seems to have within him 
the seeds of mental disease or crime, or both. Only the most sheltered 
environment and skilled management could hope to make of him a 
self-supporting citizen of decent behavior. 


Case 16. 


CASE REPORTS. 


101 


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DISCUSSION OP RESULTS. 


In discussing the results of an experiment like ours, one is con¬ 
stantly hampered by the fact that there is no control experiment. It 
is impossible to say what would have happened had these children 
been left in‘the regular classes. We can only state our convictions as 
to the contribution made. In the first place, we believe that many 
of these children would never have learned to read fluently without 
the special assistance of the observation class. It is not necessary to 
dilate on the practical importance of being able to read. Even more 
important than the actual accomplishment of the class was the change 
of attitude toward school and school work which was observable 
among the children. In our theorizings about education, we often 
unconsciously assume that it is only those of superior ability who 
can acquire a love of learning and experience the joy of independ¬ 
ent intellectual accomplishment. Those of inferior ability we men¬ 
tally condemn to a process of having learning inserted into them by 
surreptitious methods—a process in which the intellectual endeavor 
and the joy of accomplishment belong solely to the teacher. Our 
experience with the observation class convinces us that if the task 
can be properly adjusted to the degree of ability of the child, it is 
possible for many of the inferior children to experience the same love 
of learning and the same desire for independent work which is 
characteristic of the higher levels of accomplishment. 

Before coming to the observation class, these children had dis¬ 
played no enthusiasm for school and no pleasure in school work—a 
universal and thoroughly understandable frame of mind among 
school failures. After their stay in the observation class most of 
them loved school. Before coming to the class none of them knew 
what it was to apply themselves to school work. They had gained 
no glimpse of the nature of intellectual endeavor. During their stay 
in the class some of them laid hold upon learning with real zeal and 
zest. Many more acquired a spirit of work and a desire to do things 
for themselves—a consciousness that only what they acquired 
through their own efforts was of real value to them, which proved 
to be a permanent asset throughout their school careers, and we hope 
will be equally so long after their small quota of formal education is 
complete. 

From the point of view of the school and the teacher, the obser- 
A T ation class performed a triple service. It removed from the large 
classes the most difficult of the problem children. It saw justice done 
to these same children by giving them the benefit of the doubt as 
102 


DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


103 


long as any prospect of success remained, and, lastly, it furnished 
opportunity for a gradual diagnosis of the real nature of the diffi¬ 
culty, which will in the long run increase and make more accurate 
our power of estimating the capacities of children. Finally, the 
experiment has yielded a small mass of scientific data which is at 
least suggestive. We shall discuss, first, the results of the mental 
tests; second, their relation to other diagnostic factors; and, third, 
the adequacy of classroom provision for children of this type. 

There is one exceedingly interesting, and we believe scientifically 
important, trend evident in the successive mental tests of these chil¬ 
dren. An inspection of the table on page 113 reveals it at once, if 
it has not already struck the attention of the reader in considering 
the successive cases. In every instance, except those of the children 
who were ultimately shown to be feeble-minded, and one of those 
who was suffering from special disabilities, the intelligence quotient 
rose while the child was in the observation class and fell after he 
left it. The amounts of the increases, exclusive of the defectives and 
the special disability cases, were as follows: 


Lanclon_ 7 

Curtis__-v- 15 

Henry- 7 

Fred- 18 

Giovanni- 5 

Jean---—- 6 

Harvey- 3 

William_..._ 8 

Vivian- 3 

Ethel_—- 3 


Total--- 78 

The average increase of eight points and all but two of the individ¬ 
ual increases are large enough to be considered significant. The ab¬ 
solute uniformity of the trend is almost uncanny. The reexamina¬ 
tion of these same children after from a year to a year and a half, 
in a regular grade, shows an equally uniform fall in intelligence 
quotient. The amount of decrease is as follows: 


Landon_——- 19 

Curtis_ 7 

Henry_ 5 

Fred_ 4 

Giovanni--— 19 

Jean- 3 

Harvey- 5 

William_ 10 

Vivian--- 12 

Ethel_ 4 

Total_ 19 
























104 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


Tlie average decrease for the group of eight points is exactly the 
amount of average increase at the end of a year in the observation 
class. 

For the children whom we were ultimately forced to class as de¬ 
fective, in no instance did an increase take place, and in three of the 
four cases there was a decrease even during the stay in the observa¬ 


tion class. The facts are as follows: 

Decrease. 

Matthew_7 

Luella___ 0 

Catherine_1 

Wade___._9 


The further decrease, represented by the last test available, is as 
follows: 


Matthew_ 

Luella_ 

Catherine_ 

Wade_- 


_ 5 

_15 

__ 9 

. No record. 


For the two boys with specialized defects, the intelligence quotients 
do not show a constant trend. Everett’s went up during his stay 
in the observation class, from 89 to 96, and came down to 92 after¬ 
ward, like that of the normal children. His level is higher now than 
when we first saw him. David’s quotient fell from 95 to 86 while 
he was in the class. It is interesting to note that Everett was at 
least partially successful in his work, whereas David failed. 

The improvement in the supplementary and performance tests, 
during the period of residence in the observation class, is equally 
striking, but less easy to summarize numerically. The only in¬ 
stances in which a test was performed less well after the observa¬ 
tion class training than before, were construction puzzle tests,.-— 
the very type of test in which the memory of a previous success¬ 
ful performance might have been expected to count for most. In 
the case of the substitution test a different key was used each year. 
A memory of the previous test would thus have been a hindrance, 
not a help. The improvement in ability to perform this test is par¬ 
ticularly striking. The opposites test also shows a uniform improve¬ 
ment during residence in the class. In the examinations^ made after 
the children had been returned to the regular grades, very few per¬ 
formance and supplementary tests were used. Instead, more time 
was given to standardized educational tests. 

When we first became aware of the uniform increase in intelligence 
quotient of all except the defectives in the observation class, we 
thought it possible that unconscious tutoring on the part of the 
teacher, who was familiar with the content of the tests, might ac¬ 
count for it. Accordingly we made an analysis of the successes and 
failures in each test of the Stanford revision for the first three tests. 

















DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


105 


We could discover no evidence that the tests most open to instruc¬ 
tion were the ones in which improvement had taken place. Indeed 
we could discover no uniformities whatever with regard to the ele¬ 
ments of the series responsible for the increase. 

Our next idea was that we had demonstrated that superior teach¬ 
ing could bring about a permanent increase of intelligence quotient. 
A real dependence of mental-test level upon the degree of school 
success seemed to be implied. Fortunately, however, we refrained 
from drawing this seemingly probable conclusion, and watched the 
experiment further. 

Our discovery that after a return to the regular class, the intelli¬ 
gence quotients of the group fell as much as they had risen while m 
attendance, was a complete surprise. The only way in which we 
are able to interpret it is that the stimulating atmosphere which 
surrounds the children in that class actually increases their power 
of performance while it lasts. It is as though the constant, per¬ 
sonal, stimulating influence of the teacher infuses into the children 
an alertness and a capacity for comprehension which they can not 
command when thrown on their own resources. Whether the gain 
in power could be consolidated and made a permanent possession if 
the children could be left for a longer period in so favorable an 
environment, we do not know, though we are inclined to think it 
possible. The laboratory has in its possession an interesting series 
of tests of defectives of adolescent age who belong in families of 
wealth and have been given unusual advantages in care and in indi¬ 
vidual teaching. The intelligence quotients of these children have 
been unexpectedly high. It is, of course, impossible for us to say 
what their intelligence quotients would have been without the con¬ 
stant skilled individual teaching which they had enjoyed for years, 
but we were convinced in our own minds that had they belonged in 
families similar to those of our observation class group, their mental- 
test levels would have been materially lower as adults. 

The most striking moral of the tale of our observation class is 
that of the many lines of evidence and information necessary to a 
real understanding of problem children. As in so many other in¬ 
stances, that which we demonstrate for problem children will doubt¬ 
less hold good in its essentials for all children. The determination 
of mental level is one important element in the diagnosis of these 
cases, but it is only one. To give it its just value in relation to 
physical, social, educational, and hereditary factors is one of the 
important tasks of applied psychology. The number of cases which 
we have analyzed—only 16 in all—is too small a basis for final or 
convincing demonstration of the point, but we can not refrain from 
discussing some of the suggested relationships of these various 
factors which future investigations may prove or disprove. 


106 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

In the first place it is worth while to point out that it was the 
intelligence quotient, in its relation to educational progress, which 
defined the problem for us. In every instance the children with 
whom we worked displayed a discrepancy between intelligence level 
as measured by the quotient and expected academic progress. The 
primary importance of measuring the intelligence quotient is evi¬ 
dent. It is equally striking that if we had depended on intelli¬ 
gence quotient alone in making a prognosis of success or failure we 
should have been grossly misled. Jean, who had one of the lowest 
quotients, proved to have the highest rank in terms of ultimate 
success, while Fred, who had the highest quotient, is one of those 
of least accomplishment. The factors which might have helped us 
to a favorable prognosis for Jean were previous educational neglect 
of a gross sort, good health, an excellent disposition and social 
attitude, and good practical ability. Her home environment was 
unfavorable in that it contained no elements of help or stimulation 
to school work, and was not harmonious, but favorable, in that it 
furnished an atmosphere of personal affection and interest. In the 
case of Fred all the factors were favorable except his psychopathic 
heredity. He had good health, fairly good care, a home atmosphere 
of great affection, interest, and harmony (except for bursts of tem¬ 
per), and good school advantages previous to the observation class. 
The psychopathic strain in the family is shown by the presence of the 
idiot brother and the almost insane behavior of the mother. Fred’s 
sudden burst of unmotivated, violent temper, and his fits of cruelty to 
other children, for which he can assign no cause, are part of the same 
picture. It would have been impossible to predict how successful 
school training might be in overcoming marked psychopathic tend¬ 
encies. The outcome in this case is not hopeful. It is interesting to 
note that success has been greater in overcoming the overt expressions 
of violence than in inducing normal school progress. 

In the case of the four children who were ultimately diagnosed as 
defective, all were in good physical condition. Catherine and Mat¬ 
thew had conspicuously good health, and Wade had no defects. In 
the case of Luella we were inclined to think that the shock effects 
of the accident which had mutilated her left hand and retarded her 
progress in learning to talk, might be a factor in her school failure. 
If so, the injury produced was too deep to be cured by the social or 
educational methods of our experiment. We are now much more 
inclined to think the defect was congenital. All of these children 
had a history of good previous educational opportunities. They had 
spent from two to three and a half years in good city schools with¬ 
out visible progress. All of these children had good homes. Those 
of Luella, Catherine, and Matthew were good both physically and 


DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


107 


spiritually. Wad© had good care but bad management. In only 
one instance, that of Matthew, were we able to learn of defective 
heredity. Matthew’s father, who had never learned to read or write, 
though all the rest of his family were educated people, seemed a 
sufficient explanation of his son. Our histories of these families 
were by no means satisfactory enough to enable us to feel that we 
knew their heredity. None of these children except Wade was the 
simple and easily recognized defective. The others had special abili¬ 
ties not often found in conjunction with their degree of mental in¬ 
ability. Matthew’s flashes of wit and unexpected understanding of 
events and situations, Luella’s practical ability, and Catherine’s 
social genius are not the usual possession of the defective. The 
general conclusion which we can draw is that the combination of 
good health, good school opportunities, and a good home with bad 
academic failure of two or more years, means a very unfavorable 
prognosis in spite of some striking special abilities, and an intelli¬ 
gence quotient somewhat above the usually accepted limits of defect. 

The group of children who are classed as at least partial successes 
present a striking contrast to the defectives. Only one of them, 
Jean, was in really good physical condition at the time of the first 
examination. Landon was in fairly good health though very much 
undersized. The others were all suffering from various degrees of 
under nourishment, anaemia, and diseased tonsils, adenoids, and 
teeth. Only one of these children, Jean, had suffered from lack of 
school facilities, though irregular attendance had been a factor in 
three cases. The chief contrast between these school histories and 
those of the defectives lies in their shorter period of school training. 
Most of these children had school careers of not more than two years 
previous to their first examination. The home conditions, like the 
physical condition, of the successful group are much below the stand¬ 
ard of the defectives. Only one of them, Harvey, had a home in 
which both the physical surroundings and the family atmosphere 
seemed reasonably good. All of the others suffered from excessive 
poverty, insanitary living conditions, a bad family atmosphere, or 
all three. Too little is known of the family histories of this group 
to be able to take account of factors of heredity. The status of mem¬ 
bers of the immediate family—parents or brothers and sisters—is our 
only real evidence on this point. 

As a group the previous histories of these children contain possi¬ 
ble factors to explain failure in school—bad health and poor home 
environment—which affect both physical and mental condition. In 
trying to explain the relative improvement or lack of improve¬ 
ment, each case must, of course, be considered individually. Very 
few generalizations can be made. It is interesting to note, however, 
30526°—23-8 


108 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

that operative correction of physical defects, such as removal of 
diseased tonsils and adenoids and teeth, played no part. None of 
the parents heeded our advice on these points, and we were not in 
a position to bring pressure to bear upon them. The improvement 
took place in spite of the continued physical difficulties. It is of 
course probable that a greater improvement could have been at¬ 
tained if the diseased tonsils had been removed. The improvement 
in health alone, even though it bore no direct relation to school 
progress, would make the correction of physical defects worth while. 
It seems to be true, however, that the presence of even badly 
diseased tonsils, adenoids, and teeth is not an insurmountable ob¬ 
stacle to school progress, provided the educational methods are 
sufficiently good. It is possible, however, that these same children 
might have succeeded under ordinary classroom conditions had it 
not been for their poor physical condition. In no instance was 
physical condition alone held responsible for failure. In the case 
of William it played a larger role than in any other, and he was 
one of the most successful in school work. Among these children 
physical defects were usually united with poor home conditions. 
Sometimes poverty, with its attendant poor food and insanitary 
quarters, was the only other handicap. This was the case with 
Vivian, Landon, and Harvey. More frequently the home atmos¬ 
phere or management contained bad elements, such as William’s 
abusive father and careless mother; Henry’s mother, with her 
excessive devotion to the movies; Curtis’s drunken father, coquettish 
mother, and the family divorce; Giovanni’s drunken mother and 
insane uncle; and Ethel’s mother and sister of questionable morality. 
These home conditions, also, it was beyond the power of the school 
to correct. The improvement of the observation class took place 
in spite of them. 

Personal characteristics of the children also played their part in 
the outcome. In one case, that of Harvey, neither physical condi¬ 
tion, educational history, nor home conditions or atmosphere seemed 
sufficiently bad to account for his failure. Certain obsessions which 
we discovered, and evidences of an abnormal preoccupation with mat¬ 
ters of sex, made us feel that in his case the chief cause of failure lay 
in mental distractions which prevented attention to his school work. 
Curtis’s failure, too, in the face of a fully normal mental level, was 
too great to be accounted for by any factor except a perturbed spirit, 
caused in his case by the divorce of his mother and father, for both 
of whom he had a real affection, and the subsequent family squabbles. 
Giovanni’s complete failure during his early years in school we at¬ 
tributed not merely to neglect, bad physical condition, and limited 
ability, but to his anxious and distracted spirit. Landon, too, suf- 


DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


109 


fered from a sensitiveness and suggestibility which made success im¬ 
possible except under an exceptionally stimulating and encouraging 
atmosphere. Whether or not a given family or school situation 
proved to have a disturbing and inhibitory effect on the child’s prog¬ 
ress depended very largely on the disposition of the child. Some of 
these children seemed crushed by situations which others were able 
to disregard. 

Let me summarize this discussion by attempting an outline of pro¬ 
cedure in the diagnosis of young school failures. 

(1) The first point to consider is the mental level of the child. It 
may be low enough to be a sufficient explanation of the failure. 

(2) The second point to consider is the child’s academic history. 
Kegular attendance at good schools for a period which should have 
resulted in visible school progress, but has not, is an unfavorable 
symptom. Very irregular attendance or very poor school oppor¬ 
tunities are favorable symptoms. 

(3) The third point for investigation is the child’s state of health. 
The points of most common importance are the condition of vision 
and hearing, the nourishment of the child, the, state of tonsils, 
adenoids, and teeth, and the possibility of anaemia, tuberculosis, or 
syphilis. The glands of internal secretion may prove to be of great 
importance to mental state, but the evidence is not yet convincing. 
In our experience, we have had few instances in which physical 
condition alone seemed to us responsible for bad school failure. The 
fact that it is a contributing cause, and should be looked after even 
if it were not, is incontestable. 

(4) The fourth point, and the most difficult of determination, is 
the general mental tone and attitude of the child. Under this head 
the points to consider are: (a) Mental distraction due to anxiety 
usually caused either by poverty, or by unhappy relationships in 
the family, such as constant quarreling of the parents, immoral be¬ 
havior of the parents, divorces, or cruelty toward the children, (b) 
Personality conflicts between the child and his parents or between 
the child and his teachers. (The present series contains no instance 
of this type.) (c) Obsessions or fears, having to do with religious 
ideas, or with sex. (d) Special disabilities (both instances in our 
series were probably the effect of previous diseases of the nervous 
system). ( e) Character defects, such as excessive shyness, or ab¬ 
normal stubbornness, which as far as our present knowledge goes may 
be congenital, or may be due to the experiences of infancy and the 
preschool period. (/) Psychopathic conditions which are quite cer¬ 
tainly hereditary in children of this age, and can not be sharply 
delineated from what we have called character defects, except by 
their more extreme and unaccountable manifestations. 


110 TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 

The relative importance of these mental factors differs enormously 
from case to case. Those due to external causes, such as poverty 
or unfortunate family relationships, are the most hopeful, both 
because the cause may be removed, and because the mental attitude 
may be directly modified through personal influence. In general, 
the larger the hereditary factor, the more difficult the task of modi¬ 
fying the mental state. However, since we can not know at present 
which traits are truly hereditary and which may have been induced 
by early experience, we can only assume that all are modifiable by 
wise treatment, and do our best. It is somewhat surprising that 
in the cases in which we have thought the hereditary factor largest 
we have been more successful in reforming behavior than in inducing 
school progress. 

(5) The fifth and final point is the heredity of the child. It is 
exceedingly important to know, but very difficult to get, except in 
so far as the immediate family reveals it, unless one has facilities for 
social research which are not now at the command of any school 
system. A definite knowledge of a psychopathic heredity is, of 
course, a very unfavorable factor. 

The social conditions of the child have not in this summary been 
treated as a separate head, because it is as they modify the health 
or the mental attitude of the child that they enter into a diagnosis. 
If social conditions were playing a part, the fact necessarily comes 
out in making an adequate mental and physical examination. The 
very same social factors which may in one child set up serious 
anxiety states can be met and disregarded by another. A degree 
of poverty, which when combined with poor management may mean 
serious undernourishment, may with good management have no un¬ 
favorable effect on health. It is the reaction on the child, not the 
external social states, which needs to be studied. The necessity for 
extending both the mental and the physical diagnosis into the home 
background is, of course, obvious. 

If the school of the future is to be equipped to meet problems such 
as those of our observation class, it is evident that a great extension 
of the extra-classroom facilities of the school must tane place. Hun¬ 
dreds of children are failing in our schools for causes which lie 
primarily outside the classroom. These failures can not be prop¬ 
erly diagnosed, much less wisely treated, unless the school has facili¬ 
ties for securing careful mental and physical examinations, social 
investigations, and family histories of the children. Progressive 
school systems already recognize the obligation to extend school 
functions in these directions. The existence of psychological clinics, 
of school medical clinics, and of visiting teachers demonstrates the 
point. The difficulty is that service of this type is as yet so limited, 


DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


Ill 


even in the best of our systems, that it touches but a small fraction 
of the need. In the psychological clinics we need a far larger staff 
in proportion to the school population than any system as yet pos¬ 
sesses. The head of such a department should have the best train¬ 
ing the world affords. In our school medical clinics we also need 
more physicians, better trained physicians, and far better facilities 
for laboratory diagnosis than any system as yet possesses In the 
realm of social investigation the schools are perhaps least well- 
equipped of all. In some school systems an attempt is being made 
to provide for a knowledge of home conditions by having the regular 
classroom teachers do the home visiting. When one knows the exac¬ 
tions of the modern classroom of 30 or more children, it seems 
unreasonable to expect the teacher to have time or strength outside 
of her teaching hours to do adequate home investigation. Some con¬ 
tact of the teacher with the home and the parents is essential, but 
the kind and amount of investigation necessary to serve as a basis 
for the solution of home problems which are factors in school failure 
can not be undertaken by the regular teacher. Not only is the time 
at her disposal inadequate, but the technique required for good social 
investigation is a special one not at the command of the average 
teacher. The type of person required is the trained social worker. 
Our visiting teachers, most of whom are as yet paid by private 
organizations, are demonstrating the type of service needed. With¬ 
out doubt the logical place to develop this type of service is in the 
attendance office of the schools. The gradual evolution of the attend¬ 
ance officer from the mere police officer of the past to the visiting 
teacher of the future is one of the most important and far-reaching 
phases of modem education. To accomplish the result both the 
number of officers and the educational requirements for the service 
must be greatly increased. 

While it is necessary for the school to have as part of its own 
organization all the facilities necessary for diagnosing its own 
educational problems, it is not necessary or possible that it should 
have all the resources for treatment. It can not maintain its own 
hospitals for the treatment of remedial physical defects. It can not 
become a case working agency for the complete solution of family 
problems. It can not assume control of all the recreational facili¬ 
ties of the community. What the school can do—and do far more 
efficiently than any other agency—is to become a center through 
which medical and social problems are wisely referred to the agen¬ 
cies of the community best fitted to deal with them. The com¬ 
munity-wide contacts of the school and its hold on the family 
through the child give it a strategic position for the discovery and 
diagnosis of mental, physical, and social ills which no other agency 
can possibly equal. Give the school an adequate staff of psycholo- 


112 


TREATMENT OF YOUNG SCHOOL FAILURES. 


gists, of physicians, and of social workers for determining the real 
causes of school failure, give it the necessary resources for educa¬ 
tional treatment, and let it refer to the medical, case-working, and 
recreational agencies of the community for the treatment of the 
noninstructional phases of the problem. 

While the extra-classroom resources of the school are most de¬ 
fective, it is also true that classroom facilities for meeting the prob¬ 
lems of school failures are by no means adequate. Most school sys¬ 
tems have classes for defectives, but very few have a sufficient num¬ 
ber of them to accommodate all the defective children. Many 
schools have special classes for backward children, but few of them 
have a sufficient number of such classes or satisfactory curriculum. 
Very few schools have diagnostic classes of the type described in 
this study. The number of classes in Cincinnati (three at present) 
is merely enough to demonstrate the kind of service which may be 
performed, but totally inadequate to furnish care to the hundreds 
of children who need it. One type of class which, so far as the 
writer is aware, is not yet developed in any school system but which 
is needed, is a class for psychopathic children who are not also 
defective. These children are few in number but are a very dis¬ 
turbing element in any classroom and can not be adequately studied 
and helped in any type of class now in existence. The best pro¬ 
vision for them would be the establishment of a school for psycho¬ 
pathic children in a hospital where the psychiatric service is well 
developed. The type of cooperation could be the same as that for 
the crippled children—-the teaching furnished by the public schools 
and the medical supervision by the hospital staff. The children 
sent for observation and treatment could then be taught without 
disturbing the progress of other children who have troubles enough 
of their own without being compelled to endure the vagaries of the 
somewhat unbalanced. At the same time a system of preventive 
treatment could be worked out for the psychopathic child. 

All of the suggested additions to school facilities, both those for 
extra-classroom resources and those for added types of classes, mean 
more money spent upon our school system. No teacher and no social 
worker should hesitate to insist that the most vital and fundamental 
undertaking of the community is that of securing wise and adequate 
education for children. No matter which of our social ills is attacked, 
the ultimate remedy is always found in preventive measures, and 
the carrying out of a preventive program always means more edu¬ 
cation for the community. Something can be done through added 
instruction and information of adults, but the really vital and per¬ 
manent improvement of society rests upon the better preparation of 
the next generation to avoid the mistakes of this. It is not too much 
to say that if every child could be adequately studied and education 


DISCUSSION OF RESULTS. 


113 


really adapted to the needs of the individual child, most of the prob¬ 
lems of vice and crime would disappear. Children are spoiled in the 
making in ways that we see and understand, and yet, at present, we 
stand and look on, powerless to prevent the havoc, not so much from 
lack of knowledge as from lack of resources. Provide adequate 
clinics—mental, physical, and social; adequate school systems; and 
adequate institutions for the feeble-minded and the psychopathic, 
who prove during their period of education unable to adapt them¬ 
selves to conditions outside of institutions, and most of our reforma¬ 
tory and penal institutions could be done away with. 

For those who believe that the regeneration of society necessarily 
rests upon a more adequate and wiser education of the young (and 
every teacher should believe it), modesty in demanding more money 
for education is cowardice. The community at large must be made 
to see the situation as clearly as the educator and the social worker, 
and then the money will be forthcoming. 


Summary of successive examinations—Stanford revision. 


Case 

num¬ 

ber. 

Num¬ 

ber 

of 

test. 

Date of 
test. 

Chron. 

age 

(years 

and 

mos.) 

Mental 

age 

(years 

and 

(mos.) 

Intel¬ 

ligence 

quo¬ 

tient. 

Case 

num¬ 

ber. 

Num¬ 

ber 

of 

test. 

Date of 
test. 

Chron. 

age 

(years 

and 

mos.) 

Mental 

age 

(years 

and 

mos.) 

Intel¬ 

ligence 

quo¬ 

tient. 

1st.... 

1 

2- 1-1917 

9- 5 

7- 7 

80 

9th.... 

1 

1-31-1917 

9- 6 

7- 2 

75 

2 

6-13-1918 

10- 9 

9- 4 

86 


2 

6-13-191S 

10-11 

8-10 

81 


3 

1-23-1920 

12- 5 

10- 4 

83 


3 

1-28-1920 

12- 6 

9- 7 

77 


4 

3-23-1921 

13- 7 

11- 6 

85 

10th... 

1 

10-22-1917 

7- 5 

6- 0 

81 

2d. 

1 

1-16-1917 

7- 5 

6- 5 

86 


2 

2-20-1918 

7- 9 

5- 7 

72 

2 

6-12-1918 

8-10 

8- 3 

94 

11th... 

1 

5-11-1917 

9- 8 

8- 4 

86 


3 

1-22-1920 

10- 5 

8- 9 

84 


2 

6-13-1918 

10-10 

9- 4 

86 

3d..... 

1 

3-20-1917 

7- 0 

5-10 

84 


3 

1-16-1920 

12- 5 

8-10 

71 


2 

6-14-1918 

8- 3 

7- 6 

91 

12th... 

1 

1- 9-1917 

9- 5 

7- 8 

81 


3 

1-23-1920 

9-10 

8- 6 

86 


2 

6-14-1918 

10-10 

8- 8 

80 


4 

3-22-1921 

11- 0 

9- 5 

85 


3 

2- 3-1920 

12- 6 

8-10 

71 

4th.... 

1 

3-27-1917 

7- 7 

6-10 

90 

13th... 

i 1 

11-17-1916 

8- 6 

7- 6 

88 

2 

6-12-1918 

8- 9 

8- 2 

93 


2 

2-20-1918 

9- 8 

7-10 

81 


3 

1-28-1920 

10- 5 

8- 6 

81 


3 

1-23-1919 

10- 7 

8- 6 

80 

5th.... 

1 

1- 9-1917 

9- 0 

7- 4 

81 


4 

1-15-1920 

11- 7 

8-10 

76 

2 

6-12-1918 

10- 6 

9- 3 

88 

14th... 

i 1 

4- 4-1917 

9 

8 

89 


3 

3- 2-1920 

12- 3 

8- 6 

69 


2 

11-24-1917 

9- 8 

8- 7 

89 

6 th.... 

1 

2-14-1917 

6- 7 

5- 6 

84 


3 

6-12-1918 

10- 2 

9-10 

96 

2 

6-13-1918 

7-11 

7-10 

99 


4 

3-11-1920 

12 

11- 1 

92 


3 

1-28-1920 

9- 6 

8- 9 

92 

15th... 

1 

4- 8-1918 

10- 4 

9-10 

95 

7th.... 

1 

2- 8-1917 

7- 8 

6-10 

89 


2 

9-27-1920 

12-10 

11- 0 

86 

2 

6-13-1918 

9 

8- 3 

92 

16th... 

1 

10-22-1917 

7- 8 

6- 8 

87 


3 

1-28-1920 

10- 8 

9- 4 

87 


2 

6-14-1918 

8- 4 

8- 9 

105 


4 

8- 8-1921 

12- 2 

10- 2 

83 


3 

1-21-1920 

9-11 

10- 0 

101 

8th.... 

1 

3- 6-1917 

7-10 

6- 4 

81 


4 

8- 4-1921 

11- 5 

9-11 

86 

2 

6-12-1918 

9- 1 

7-10 

86 








3 

1-26-1920 

10- 9 

8- 2 

76 








4 

6- 8-1921 

12- 1 

9- 6 

79 








i Yerkes point scale. 
































INDEX 


Academic history of child, factor in diagnosis, 109. 

Alphabet teaching, 15. 

Analysis of the group tested, 8-9. 

Arithmetic, game, 12-13; teaching, 17-18. 

Case reports, 19-101. 

Child welfare, promotion of constructive activities, V. 

Children suffering primarily from neglect, case reports, 19-61. 

Color, motivated lesson, 14. 

Conditions of the experiment, 4-5. 

Course of study, special needed for defectives, 13. 

Defective children, case reports, 62-80. 

Diagnosis of young school failures, outline of procedure, 109-113. 
Gymnastics, teaching, 18. 

Health of child, factor in diagnosis, 109. 

Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, Cincinnati, objects, V. 

Heredity of child, factor in diagnosis, 110. 

High-grade defectives, 9. 

Home conditions of child, factor in diagnosis, 111. 

Mental examinations, 7. 

Mental level of child, factor in diagnosis, 109. 

Mental tone and attitude of child, factor in diagnosis, 109-110. 

Methods of teaching, 19-18. 

Neglected children, 8-9. 

Phonics, group drill, 12. 

Psychological clinics, importance and needs, 111. 

Psychological laboratory, Vocation Bureau of Cincinnati, activities, 1-3. 
Psychopathic children, 9, 96-101, 112. 

Beading and spelling, teaching, methods found most helpful, 14-16. 
Besults, discussion of case reports, 102-113. 

Scientific methods and standards, 6-7. 

Social conditions of child, factor in diagnosis, 110. 

Social workers, type of persons required, 111. 

Special defects, sufferers, 9; case reports, 81-95. 

Stanford revision, summary of successive examinations, 113. 

Teaching, methods, 10-18. 

Tests used, 6-7. 

Trounstine Foundation. See Helen S. Trounstine Foundation. 

Visiting teachers, requirements, 111. 

Vocation Bureau of Cincinnati, psychological laboratory, activities, 1-3. 
Word fitting, 16-17. 

Words, difficult, method of teaching, 17. 

Writing, drill, 12. 


o 


115 





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